Exploring the Uncharted: Madagascar Chronicles - Part One: Journeying to the Jewel of the Indian Ocean
The Malagasy Capital, Antananarivo
I read an article recently which explained that people either go to Madagascar for the wildlife (lemurs), flora (many plant species found nowhere else in the world), dramatic landscapes, amazing beaches OR because they have watched one of the three cartoon films. For me, it’s sometimes hard to work out exactly what the trigger is for a holiday destination. I’m always keeping an eye out for new destinations, amazing hotels or experiences and trying to work out the best time of year to go to different parts of the world, with the aim of covering most countries in my lifetime. I have to confess to not having seen any of the Madagascar cartoons. I think the trigger was that when I was in the Seychelles on a recent trip, staying at Constance Lemuria on Praslin, I spotted the Constance Tsarabanjina photo in one of their brochures and thought the combination of luxury well-appointed lodges on a stunning away from it all beach made me want to find out more about Madagascar.
That first spot then registered Madagascar as a possible destination and then I started doing some more research. It was fascinating to learn about the size of the island (fourth largest in the world) and that geologists believe that Madagascar was formerly connected to Africa but physically broke off from the continent about 150 million years ago. Madagascar is now situated about 250 miles (400 kilometers) east of Mainland Africa. It’s this geographical isolation that results in Madagascar’s distinctive biodiversity.
As I started to research possible locations to visit on the island itself, as well as wanting to finish up in the north of the island at Constance Tsarabanjina (a boat ride off Nosy Be) I realized that there were so many options for interesting places to visit and it would need to be a case of homing in on what we wanted to see most on our first visit. It also became apparent that it wasn’t perhaps going to be the easiest destination to get to - my “go to first” airline choices of either British Airways or Qatar Airways showed that neither flew here. There are some direct flights to the capital, Antananarivo, from France but mainly serviced by mainland Africa (Kenya/South Africa/Ethiopia) or the Indian Ocean islands of Mauritius or Reunion. The more touristy north part of the island (around Nosy Be) I believe is serviced by some direct flights from Italy and France too. We opted to fly British Airways overnight to Johannesburg and then onwards with South African Airways (they operate daily flight to/from the capital Antananarivo) as well as a weekly direct flight to/from Nosy Be (with refueling stop at Beira in Mozambique). My first impression of Air Madagascar (who fly internally but also from France and China), were that we should try to minimize any journeys with them as far as possible due to their extremely poor reviews. As we found out later for ourselves, they do have a tendency to cancel flights at very short notice and their customer service follow up wasn’t the best - Air Madagascar made us miss our first night at Constance Tsarabanjina.
The trip itself
Johannesburg, South Africa
After a great flight with British Airways, we arrived into Johannesburg early Friday morning, we stored our main luggage at the terminal so that we only had hand luggage to take to our overnight hotel, The Leading Hotel of the World ‘Michaelangelo Hotel’ in Sandton. We took the Gautrain direct from the airport, this was a quick, easy and an efficient way to get us to the hotel in about 15 minutes - the station was located almost right next to the hotel. I chose this hotel not only because of its membership of the LHW programme (the place I tend to look first wherever I book a hotel) but also to make it easy for us to return to the airport for the South African Airways direct flight to Antananarivo the next day. Sandton, the financial district of Johannesburg, is very well serviced for shops and restaurants - the hotel was connected to (Nelson) Mandela Square Shopping Centre and adjacent to the Sandton City Shopping Centre.
Antanarivo, Madagascar
O.R Tambo Johannesburg airport warning
The following morning, we set off for the SAA flight direct to the Madagascan capital, Antananarivo. We were slightly worried by the plague warning sign at the airport but we had known about this in advance and knew how to take precautions. The flight was about three hours non-stop, there was small business class cabin and in flight service was decent. We had organised a ‘meet and greet’ service at the airport on arrival, but we were already at the point of purchasing our arrival visas before we were ‘greeted’. Claiming baggage was easy but then the fun started when we realised that several flights had arrived at the same time and lots of people were trying to exit. Our greeter tried to navigate the queues, without much success, but eventually we got to the scanning machines. Our luggage was selected for review and we were taken to a middle section to open up our bags for inspection - I’d packed a separate bag of charity donations (writing/drawing materials etc. for local schools at some of our safari camps) and this seemed to make the officials think we were bringing in goods commercially. After reading many reviews online about Malagasy officials asking for a “gift” I did expect this to be next step but thankfully (on this occasion) we weren’t. We set off to the centre of town where we were staying for a couple of days before, at the Grand Hotel Urban. I think if we were going back we would look into staying at La Maison Gallieni instead, this wasn’t one that had featured on my list but this restored mansion looks really interesting. The now boutique hotel was the building of the first bank in Madagascar, it now also houses the Monaco Consulate.
More about Antananarivo and the rest of our Malagasy trip in my next blog.
