names of a guides in madagascar

If you'd like to take a trip for a few days on the Tsiribihina river, I can recommend Gilbert Ramora. We had a great trip with him in 2006. He does not have a website, and I can't remember the price, but I remember it was reasonable - and much less than booking through an agency.

You can PM me for his email address.

D

Contact www.madaconnection.com

nice people, fair price.

Travelled with them on multiple occaisions over the past two weeks.

Good service and very reliable!

Perhaps what you should ask yourself first is what you need a guide for.

Using local transport (taxis brousses) is easy and cheap, you can sort it out yourself at short notice, and it brings you into contact with local people. There are very few places in the country where taxis brousses don't go (assuming that you can reach them by motor vehicle at all).

Once you get to your chosen destination area, you can engage a truly local guide or operator if necessary to get you to less accessible places. If your destination's a national park, you must engage a park guide who is accredited with ANGAP, the parks authority anyway.

The disadvantages of taxi brousse travelling are that it usually takes longer than with a private vehicle, you'll normally have to wait for every seat to be filled before you leave, and it's often not exactly comfortable. Some taxi brousse stations (notably Tana south) can appear very alarming to first-timers because of the aggressive touting, although in reality it's harmless.

I've also heard good reports about Madaconnection (see #2), and I certainly wouldn't want to knock them. If what you're looking for is to set up your whole trip in advance, and to have either a vehicle for yourself or to share a vehicle with a relatively small group of other foreigners, then this is the type of operator to go for.

You need to be aware though that even with a moderately priced operation like Madaconnection appears to be, you'll end up paying a premium price for having someone else do for you what you could easily do for yourself. It all depends in the final analysis on what type of travel you're into.

Two final points to keep in mind - it hardly ever makes sense to have a tour operator / guide arrange domestic flights for you.

Private vehicles don't bring any advantages in terms of road safety - moderately maintained vehicles and a "competitive" style of driving are common features across the spectrum.

Hi
I would 100% recommend Rija of Rijatours ,he really looked after us, we had a bit of a disaster and lost some money,he went back to the village to try and locate it a round trip of approx 10 hours!!,what more could you ask.We used his tour company for the full month we was there we did the river trip for three days with him.the south tour in reverse back to Tana,the west coast tour endinng up on isle au nattes and what a relaxing place this is.
When we go back we will definetely go with him again.Have a look at his website at www.rijatours.mg for info.

We recommend www.kingdelapiste.de for north/northwest Mada.
See their homepage.
Good luck!