Introducing Southern Madagascar

Hot, weird and wild, Southern Madagascar is a cinematographer’s wet dream. Filled with the world’s most exotic flora and surreal landscapes, the countryside looks like no other place on earth. This is the Madagascar of the Discovery Channel, and the country’s most visited region. It’s a mixed-up land where unreal forests of long-limbed spiny succulents compete with baobabs sporting trunks tattooed with psychedelic red and yellow swirls for the title of trippiest attraction. It’s also home to some fabulous national parks for trekking, including popular Parc National de l’Isalo, and beautiful deserted beaches with excellent snorkelling around pristine reefs.

The bustling port of Toliara (Tuléar) is worlds apart from the rural countryside. Bedecked in bougainvillea and jacaranda and filled with narrow corridors ripe with the smells of salty ocean water and fresh baguettes, it also has a hint of ethnic spice in the often-gritty air. The wide boulevards here are home to both Arab and French architecture, with elaborate domed mosques sitting next to crumbling, whitewashed colonial buildings.

For a real adventure, head to the southeast, where you’ll find Madagascar at its most wild and real. Travel here is rough, and takes a lot of time and patience – roads are often nothing more than dirt tracks, and tourism facilities are pretty nonexistent. But the area is rich in history, and steeped with legends of shipwrecked sailors, rogue spice traders and colonies of pirates. Two oceans collide outside Fort Dauphin (Taolagnaro), home to Madagascar’s best surfing, but sadly the town has been taken over by titanium mines and is of little interest to tourists.