We will be travelling end of March next year and plan to be there for about 16 full days .
Is it easy to organize car hire (+guide) on arrival in Tana or are you flooded with touts competing with each other ?. I Is it possible to drive from Maronjejy to Tana or is that not practical ? Can anyone recommend a driver/guide with a vehicle to hire ?
Don't know anything about hiring vehicles in Tana. But it is not really practical to hire to Marojejy from there. It is a hell of a long way, and at some point you are going to have to tackle a very, very bad road. As private hires will not drive over night you would be looking at 3 or 4 days to get there. Because of the road, I bet they will charge a hell of a lot as well. Better to fly!
Boy? Goodness... Anyway... to Utopiasearchers, it is my personal opinion that frankt is actually not a traveller, rather he is doing self promotion for his business in Madagascar. I find tour operators who are sneaky like that, pretending to be travellers on the forums, really kind of untrustworthy.
In answer to your questions, please consider flying to Maroantsetra and organising a car hire up there. If any of the other contributors who know that area better are around, perhaps they could give you clear advice but as far as I know, the answer to your questions are:
And just as an aside, I guess you already know but March is the height of the wet season it can be very wet all over Madagascar at that time. You should consider your routes and means of travel carefully and if you want to go by road long distances, then allow plenty of time, don't try to stick to tight schedules, be flexible. Sometimes, you can wait days for a river to become passable, as just one example of what can happen.
Thanks Brett - I think we are going to go second half of April now - sounds too wet in March - now we are thinking of hiring a vehicle and driver doing 2 days Tsingy, a few days hiking in D'Andringitra, a few days snorkelling somewhere nice , and other nice places in between - we will have about 16 full days and are really keen on another 2 - 3 day hikes in a park if anyone has any suggestions for somewhere in that area ( North west ). Maronjejy is not practical this time round .
Why don't you just keep heading south? From Tana you have Ranomofana NP, Andringitra, Isalo etc and then you end up on the coast. Seems perfect for 16 days.
To be honest that's my advice too... if you are already going to Andringitra then you are already on the RN7 heading south. You could go:
Tana to Fianarantsoa (try to find a hotel in the old city, such as the Vala)
Fianar to Ranomafana NP (I recommend Chez Gaspard to stay in Ranomafana)
Ranomafana back to the RN7 going south
Andringitra (I guess sleeping in Ambalavao? I'm not familiar with that area)
Then continue south to Isalo, where there are many good places to stay.
Then continue south to Tulear where I recommend you take a pirogue to Anakao for beach relaxing and snorkelling. Plenty of places to stay in Anakao, but recently I sent friends to stay at Atlantis and they hated it and there were some safety issues when diving.
Or instead of Tulear you could also head south east to Fort Dauphin, endless beaches, more parks, relaxed small town...
You haven't mentioned if budget it an issue. If it isn't then a private car hire for the whole trip from Tana to Tulear would be amazing. If you don't want to spend that much money, it's entirely possible to take public transport from Tana to Fianarantsoa and on to Ranomafana. You could then hire a car in Fianarantsoa for the rest of the trip south, which would cut down on the number of days hire and would only be one extra day hire for the car to return from Tulear to Fianar.