Madagascar
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Visas, Embassies & Border Crossings
When leaving the country, customs are eager to find things you shouldn't have. Too many 'jeu solitaire', too many spices/vanilla, too many tin cars, etc. But in fact they only want to make a little extra money. So if you are sure you really have not got too much stuff, insist that you have the right to carry these things. If you are not so sure, a 'petit cadeau' (small present like FMg25000) can help a lot. Carry only money you would need for 'petit cadeau' because once you've passed the immgration, you cannot use it anymore.
Manfred Wolfensberger, Switzerland (Apr 03)
Here's a list of stuff you will need to get a visa extension: five photos, a police check, photocopies of your passport, visa, return ticket, and the CIT card of your landlord or person you are staying with, a written letter stating why you want to stay in Madagascar and a letter from the NGO if you are volunteering.
Brook Thiessen & Jo Leech, Canada (Dec 01)
Travel Tips
I'm a lacto ovo vegetarian, quite spoiled by the variety of vegan manna available at health food stores in my hometown. I would like to offer some practical tips for fellow vegetarians visiting Madagascar.
Upscale and mid-range restaurants normally have a vegetarian section on their menus, oftentimes both in English and in French. So I will concentrate on cheap places ($4 per meal or less). If you speak fluent French, you will have no problem whatsoever even when the menu doesn't offer much by way of veggie fare, since you can always explain exactly what you want to be prepared "sur commande" and negotiate the price. Don't assume that people know what "vegetarian" means - once in Tana I was served a "vegetarian" meal of tofu, decorated with succulent morsels of sauteed beef. If, after you state that you are a vegetarian, the waitress/waiter asks you if you eat eggs and cheese, you know you're in a place where the feet of a vegetarian have trodden before and you probably won't be served anything you couldn't eat. If no questions follow, or your statement is met with a look of fascinated wonder, it's always best to specify in some detail exactly what you can and cannot eat before ordering a specific dish (if any problem arises later on, such preliminary explanations will always help you to avoid paying for a dish that was accidentally made against your specifications).
From your first steps on the island you will be greeted by a chorus of smiling children yelling their favorite "Bonjour vazaha!" as you're passing by. As your heart melts from such a cordial welcome, know that the phrase that invariably follows is "donne-moi un cadeau/stylo/ballon/cinq cents/de l'argent", etc. At first it doesn't bother you much (after all the economic discrepancies are obvious), but after a while you might get quite disheartened at being treated as a money-bag and at people always approaching you because they are seeking some sort of an advantage. There's really no recipe on how to best cope with this situation psychologically (after all, you can't feed all the children of Madagascar!), so it's good to be aware of it in advance.
Natives are also fond of asking you for your address, often after they've done you a slight service (like given directions in the street or invited you under their roof to wait through the rain). Westerners, who are not used to giving addresses and other personal information to unfamiliar people without first establishing a better basis for a friendship, usually feel embarrassed and at a loss for what to do in such a situation. If you don't want to give your address but wish to remain polite, you can always tell people of the opposite gender that your spouse would not look at the idea favorably or that being a very busy professional, you wish you had, but are afraid that you really don't have any time to correspond.
Elena Kostoglodova, USA (Sep 03)
In Ranohira most hotels are kilometres away from the regular taxi-brousse stop. If you try to hail one down at the RN7 you might end up waiting for some time because most of them leave fully packed from either Ilakaka or Ihosy. We asked our local Isalo guide if he knew a solution. How he did it we don't know, but he arranged that we were picked up at our hotel the following day by a passing taxi-brousse that had left two empty seats for us from Ilakaka. This also relieved us from walking 4 km in the early morning hours to Ranohira.
Ortwin Costenoble, Netherlands (Aug 03)
My friend took a Mastercard and I took a Visa card. In many places Mastercard was not accepted and I had to take money for both of us with Visa which was always accepted without any problems. ATM's are practically nonexistent. In any case it is good to mix with travellers cheques which are usually handled quicker.
The Lonely Planet guide says internet is rapidly expanding and there are internet cafes in all provincial capitals. This is wrong, except for Tana where it is cheap and quick. In all other places it is expensive and slow - if you are lucky to get there in one of these rare moments where you can actually get a free line! I tried everywhere, wrote and lost my text, retried again and again many times unsuccessfully. In Tuléar we where lucky, in Morondava there is no line most of the time. In Diego Suarez you can be lucky if the weather is just fine but forget about it in Maroantsetra and Sambava.
All Malagasy francs should be spent in the country, we met two couples at the airport in Madagascar who had big problems trying to change back the money. The couples were told they were out of Euros and Dollars at the official exchange office at Tana's airport. I drunk beer with the whole hotel crew just to spend my last francs.
As a vegetarian I can tell you that it is not really a problem in Madagascar. In South America people thought that it must be some kind of disease and felt sorry for me. In Madagascar they ask the only correct question: do you eat eggs and milk products? So, they know what vegetarianism is and will always fix you something special, even if it's not in the menu.
Bianca Frei, Switzerland (Feb 03)
The EURO is accepted everywhere, not only in the banks. All the hotels where we stayed accepted cash payments in euros, as before they did with French Francs
Silvia & Andrea, Italy (Feb 02)
Moving About
Try to buy your Taxe Brousse Tickets at the office and not from the driver or people at/near the bus (quite often they try to overcharge you).
Walter Pfeiffer, Germany (Sept 05)
I just came back from 46 days in Madagascar during which I visited the whole country, except the deep South. Sometimes I had to move by plane; in fact roads are often in very poor condition and local transportation always takes a long time, even for short distances. Travelling always by road, it's best to allow not less than 2 months, 3 months is better.
Generally speaking, my feeling is that some information reported in LP Madagascar, 3rd edition, seem to be fairly optimistic. For example, travel by road from Diego Suarez to Nosy Be is really tiring and it normally takes more than 1 day, unless you get a very early start. Drivers usually stop in Ambanja (halfway) and they wait until the taxi brousse gets incredibly full. Sometimes they ask you to advance cash to pay petrol or the police at check points. Sometimes you're supposed to travel on another passenger's legs. Things change of course if you apply to a travel agency in Diego or Nosy Be.
For the time being, the train is only available from Fianarantsoa to Manakara; other lines were not operating.
Independent travel is fairly expensive, and it's best to arrange short organised tours and to join other travellers.
Fabrizio Nicoletti, Italy (Jul 03)
The taxi-brousse from Belo-Sur-Tsiribihina to Tuléar takes 41 hours non-stop and costs FMg150,000. The journey was in the back of a very crowded, big truck. The truck was windowless with rain cover only. It was cold at night and a lot of tree branches intruded inside and scratched my arms and face. I found this journey to be not human and I'm very serious! The taxi was so crowded that you almost had no room to move and with the long time sitting there it became hell.
Ofir Cohen, Israel (Dec 02)
Several bridges were blown up during the political coup in 2002 which means there are detours. Also, there are many checkpoints along the road which are manned by soldiers who check out every car that goes by. There are an incredible number of enormous potholes side by side in the road from Sakaraha to Tuléar. It's unbelievable.
Suzanne Nuttall, Canada (Dec 02)
It is currently next to impossible to travel by road from Ivongo to Manara. There are sporadic 4x4 vehicles, but they are almost invariably full by the time they reach Ivongo. The road is also in very poor condition. Our expressed intention of travelling by road to Manara was greeted with disbelief and much head shaking by most of the locals. By the way, 4x4's were always referred to as quatre quatre (can sound rather like caticat) rather than camion-brousse.
The road from Antalaha to Sambava is in a very poor condition. It took a 4x4 we encountered on the road approximately 24 hours to do the journey. It took us 14 hours in a Renault 4. This included getting stuck for about 6 hours at one of many barriers which were closed overnight due to problems with vanilla theft. The closing times of the barriers are approximately 6pm or 7pm with opening times varying between 4am and 7am.
Charlie & Krista Humble (Oct 02)
Getting around by bicycle: the simplest long distance route to organise is from Tana to Toliera. It is about 800km and would make an excellent tour of three or four weeks. Apart from the short stretch east of Ranohira, all the road is surfaced and by most international standards the traffic is very light. An optional extension would be to cycle to Manakara, stopping off at Ranomafana and then getting the train back to Fianarantsoa. From Toliera you can put your bike on a plane and fly back to Tana.
Another good route is from Tana to Soanierana-Ivongo for Ile Sainte Marie and having cycled it, I have the following comments. The road from Tana to about 40 km short of Brickaville is very hilly. Although there is an overall drop of about 1600 metres you spend far more time climbing than descending - lots of long slow uphills followed by fast downhills - a fairly hard but superb ride with great scenery and views. The stretch from Bricaville to Tamatave is nowhere near as hilly.
Many touring cyclists now use 26 inch wheel mountain style bikes and this has coincided with th advent of cheap Chinese mountain bikes in Madagascar. This means that the availability of spare parts has improved. Tyres and tubes are readily available and of acceptable quality, most other parts are also available but I would only recommend them in an emergency. Also every town has bike repairmen who can fix almost anything for next to nothing. The markets are the best place to look for spares and repairmen.
Simon Hill, UK (Jan 02)
Scams & Warnings
Pirogue descents on the Tsiribihina River are potentially highly dangerous undertakings because of the zebu rustlers who dwell in the less inhabited forests along the river and sometimes make armed attacks on boats, mainly to secure basic provisions and clothing. In Morondava I met a Dutch/Malagasy couple who did the descent two days after my group and the guide related how their pirogue was attacked. The rustlers didn't take more than rice and a few shirts (and, according to some peculiar twist of logic, even offered the travellers some zebu meat in exchange!) but they were brandishing a gun, which makes such a meeting a potentially unpredictable situation, especially if the rustlers happen to be drunk. If you find yourself in a situation like this, try not to panic and do treat the rustlers with calm respect - they usually take the bare minimum necessary for survival in the forest and are afraid to rob vazaha because of potential troubles with Malagasy and other government officials.
Elena Kostoglodova, USA (Sep 03)
At Ambatoloaka on Nosy Be both travel agencies and touts at the beach or in the street can organise the usual boat excursions. In the end you will all be in the same boat and most are reliable. They all know each other. Payment after the trip is the most secure, recommended and almost always accepted. Be sure to check that the boat they indicate to you goes to the correct island. Check with the captain as soon as you board the vessel. Sometimes people try to get you on a boat that leaves that day, but to another island, as they are afraid to disappoint you.
Ortwin Costenoble, Netherlands (Aug 03)
Although I had been warned about the pick-pockets, I forgot the advice I had received and had my cell phone taken from my zipped up belly pack. It was done by 2 different groups of young teenagers or almost-teenagers. The first group of kids scouted me out and I believe the second group got the cell phone. They all acted like beggars and I ignored them which is exactly what they wanted. I continued to ignore them even after they got really close and bumped into me. Real beggars don't get this close and make physical contact.
Anon (Feb 03)
Gems, Highlights & Attractions
For those visitors to the south of Madagascar who want to see the real spiny forest - try Ifotaka. The benefits include an intact sacred forest, Antandroy tombs, lemurs, lizard, plants and birds but also getting to contribute to the local community. Ifotaka has 8 fully equipped bungalows which aren't a private enterprise but a resource for community development. There are local guides who can cook for you and a 12km circuit to the magnificent Mahavelo camp where you will wake up facing a troop of ring-tailed lemurs. To get to Ifotaka get the taxi-brousse direct from Fort Dauphin to Amboasary-sud and then the daily one to Ifotaka. Not for the faint hearted - but means you don't have to be restricted to the Garden of Berenty or the limited circuit at Andohahela.
Dave Carlson, USA (Nov 04)
The Zafimaniry villages near Ambositra are really an experience. Antoetra is touristic and a bit hectic but the others are lying solemnly in the beautiful highland landscape. They are small, scenic and contain a lot of children. These are the main attraction, making you forget the wood sculptures and pretty houses with their singing, shyness and genuine interest in you as a stranger. It makes one of the most authentic Malagasy experiences.
South of "Campement des Americains" in Ankarena N.P. is another cave which is not described in the book. It is called "Milaintety", lays about 15 minutes by car from the camp and all guides should know it. Although you cannot explore the inside of the cave because of high water levels, the entrance is a piece of sculpture by nature. Large limestone structures have been shaped by the water. All kind of structures are hanging from a 20 metre high ceiling all along the wide mouth of the cave. Like clouds in the sky, they trigger your imagination and you might see lemurs, camels and flowers envisaged in the stone. The forest bows away for such a marvel of nature, leaving behind a green shady light that colours the cave river. It is a fantastic place to spend an hour with only your imagination.
Ortwin Costenoble, Netherlands (Aug 03)
The little village of Andavadoaka (400 people, 42 km south of Morombe) is not yet on the backpacker route, as it is difficult to approach. But once there, you will enjoy one of the nicest beaches on mainland Madagascar. It has miles of uninhabited beaches, Vezos with their large outrigger canoes, dozens of baobabs only a short walk outside the village, seafood as much as you want (just tell the fishermen what you want the next day) and a small island (Nosy Hao) just off the coast with wonderful snorkeling possibilities. Scuba diving is said to be even better than in Ifaty, but you have to bring your own equipment, as there are no facilities.
Manfred Wolfensberger, Switzerland (Apr 03)
In the guidebook it says that the Grand Tsingy is bigger and more impressive than the Petit Tsingy. This is, by far, an understatement. The hike in the Grand Tsingy was one of the most incredible things we did in our five months in Madagascar. The circuit was made by a vazaha who specializes in caves. It involves narrow passageways, ladders and harnesses. There are a series of lookouts offering spectacular views and other sections that take you into caves under the Tsingy. They are constantly trying to improve this circuit. Maybe this is one of those things that you don't want to make sound too good in order to preserve its splendor.
Brook Thiessen & Jo Leech, Canada (Dec 01)
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