Introducing Eastern Madagascar

Pirates aren’t stupid. They figured out how juicy Eastern Madagascar’s treasures were and looted its coastline centuries before the rest of us caught on. A couple of hundred years later the real pirates are gone and the secret is out: there’s plenty of leftover booty in the form of dazzling pearl beaches, sparkling sapphire water and lush jade rainforests.

Travel in large parts of Eastern Madagascar isn’t easy in anyone’s book, but you can’t say it’s not an adventure. In fact, for some just the lure of trying to get around is enough reason to come. Author Tom Parkinson ‘spent weeks researching via canoe and foot, it was the only way to get around…but he said it was a highlight of his trip’, his mother wrote to us after his death.

Periodically ravished by cyclones, infrastructure along the wild and rugged long eastern coastline is poor at best. In the course of your travels, transport here will usually include riding in a zebu cart, long hikes through thick forest, and chugging along the region’s multiple waterways in a flat-bottomed boat. It’s not for everyone, but if you’re bored of the easy travel life, this coast should get your blood pumping again.

Not everywhere along the Vanilla/Pirate/Cyclone (it goes by all three) Coast is hard to reach. The well-surfaced road between Antananarivo and Toamasina is one of Madagascar’s most travelled, with most folk flocking in this direction to see (and hear) the indri, Madagascar’s biggest lemur, in Parc National d’Andasibe-Mantadia. Further north the beautiful Île Sainte Marie is also easy to reach, and the island’s palm-fringed beaches and turquoise water are beginning to edge out Nosy Be’s as a sun-worshipper’s favourite paradise.