Another concern we had was the unstable nature of
the country, specifically since the coup of 2009. Two of the main outcomes of
this were the lack of control on illegal logging, which had been bad before
this anyway, and the presence of some now much more dangerous areas. We checked
up on the FCO website when planning, and found that this was mainly in specific
locations in the South, which we would be avoiding. However, it is worth noting
that the capital of Tana remains volatile, particularly at night, when
apparently it is even dangerous for many of the locals to wander about. We had an idea of where we wanted to head by
looking at one or two of the travel sites. This seemed to include the
Andasibe/Mantadia location as a must, and this was certainly borne out, and
then to move further East to a place called Ankanin’ny Nofy, staying at the Palmarium Hotel which can only be
reached by boat. We enlisted the employ of Gane & Marshall, since they
seemed to have a lot of experience in organising tailor made holidays, and also
Madagascar "experts" in their staff. All seemed very well organised
until we reached the Palmarium. Andasibe and its environs (the Andasibe Hotel
was excellent in all respects, with a brilliant offering of lemurs, birds,
reptiles and even insects on the doorstep) were superb, but we had left much of
the description of the latter hotel to the travel company. Highlighted was the
lemurs being "not tame", but in practice they had all been imported
on to the island, were then free roaming, but tended mainly to hang around the
accommodation, with staff enticing them down with bananas and encouraging them
to "perform", with a favourite being taking food from the mouth of
the guide. For various reasons, we decided to cut the holiday short, since this
was not what we had paid for, and found Gane & Marshall to be sadly
abrasive, with an email which stated "We have not yet put through your
card payment and we will only do so on receiving email confirmation from you
that you will not be seeking any refund of these flight costs". I could NOT recommend anyone to use them
based on this attitude, and also not delivering on a WILDlife experience. Even
worse, there were one or two interesting birds (literally) in the area, but
numbered even less than the total I enjoyed when watching from the windows of
Nairobi airport. A big recommendation for binoculars here by the way, the list
of birds specifically seen within the airport at the end of the report is a
huge bonus, and that is not to mention the Giraffe and Zebra which can be seen
from the taxiing plane and the terminal (although they are in a park and can't
be counted as truly wild). Our transportation around the island was
prearranged and varied. We were driven by 4x4 from Tana to Andasibe, and then
to a boat dock for water transport to Ankanin’ny Nofy. The 4x4 was useful, since even the main East West
road was poor in places, and the driver also a benefit since some of the
directions weren't easy, and with more or less non existent road signs . . !
The people we met were as one extremely helpful and friendly, with only small
signs of the dreaded tipping plague! Electricity was usually available,
although there was the odd outage, and the plugs were of standard European
style. We were told to take Euros as currency, but did the right thing by
changing to Malagasy Ariaria the morning after we landed. Best rates are
supposed to be at banks in town, but we were there on a Sunday, and worst rates
at the hotels. Getting used to an exchange rate of 2850 to the £GB isn't easy -
even carrying around a few £'s worth looks like a fortune! Insect pests are
also present, as is the threat of malaria, so prevention is necessary.
Mosquitoes are more prevalent in the forests, and we did come across leaches in
one part of Mantadia.
|