North VS South

HI All,
I am going to Madagascar with my wife for 16 days in October. We are still not sure about the intinerary, we were thinking about doing only North or only South, our concern is that willing to do everything we might not see anything calmly.
One option would be Tana to Toliara and from there a bit north Towards Baobab Avenue and Tsingy national park.
The other oprion would be to head north from Tana.
In both cases we might think about taking a flight to get back to Tana if it makes sense. We would like to do some trekking, visit both rainy and dry forest and spending a couple of days diving, I heard in the south is where the best coral reef is but also in the north are there quite some beautiful spots.
We will probably hire a driver because I think it is the safest option but we don't really care about comfort while on holiday, we rather go for an unconfortable but true experience.
Which side of the countries would you suggest considering what we want to do? Does it really make sense to "cut off" one side of the country?
Thanks and Regards
Federico