FEEDBACK - Travelling to Nosy Be via Tana

I first started a post on 4th October 2010, "Madagascar - 1st timers", my main concern being the connection time upon landing in Tana and leaving 1 hour and 10 minutes later for a connecting flight to Nosy Be and still having to obtain visas and exchange money. I received much helpful info back. I have however just returned so can give 1st hand experience (of MY experience at least) to anyone who may have a similar concern.

Our flight leaving Johannesburg to Tana was delayed by 2 hours (this I excpected due to reading previous posts!) however the Air Madagascar ground crew in Jo'burg didn't seem too perturbed by the fact that we had a connecting flight to Nosy Be, which by my calculations, would then be missed. They simply assured us if the connecting flight was Air Mad as well we would still get on a connecting flight to Nosy Be that night. Nothing to do but wait and see.....Upon landing in Tana nearly 3 hours late we disembarked the plane and were promptly met by an airport official holding a sign saying "In Transit - Nosy Be" and shouting the same thing. He could not be missed as he was standing at the door as you enter the terminal. He promptly directed us to the front of the visa line (fyi.....visa for less than 30 days still no charge). [I just need to point out at this stage that on the flight from Jo'burg there was actually a large number of travellers in transit to Nosy Be as well and I wonder if this could possibly be why they held the connecting flight for us instead of paying to book us all into a hotel for the night, either way I wasn't complaining!]. To continue, the transit passengers were hurried to the front of the visa line to receive our visas. This went relatively smoothly. We then proceeded to collect our luggage [yes, we had booked it straight through to Nosy Be however we still had to collect it and walk it through to the next check point]. This in itself was no hassle at all, while waiting in the visa line all the luggage came through so we simply had to collect and proceed. We checked through and went to waiting in boarding for our connecting flight. All done with minimal hassle. Seeing as there were quite a large number of passengers for the connecting flight who obviously had to follow the same procedure we also had time to change our Euros to Ariary. All this done in more or less half an hour. We then waited about 10-15 minutes to board.

So having shared that painless experience I must just add that we had a FANTASTIC time in Madagascar, and HIGHLY recommend it for anyone wanting or thinking of travelling there! we stayed in Nosy Be Hotel which we thought was great (I did read quite a few undesirable reviews about this place which did almost put me off but I am glad I experienced it for myself). The staff were friendly and helpful and the food was fantastic, not one bad meal! We did a 360 tour of Nosy Be on the one day and our tour guide was brilliant. Her name was Eloise (I forget which tour company though). Also the Malagasy people themselves were very friendly and quite helpful when needed! The 2nd place we stayed was Sakatia Lodge on Sakatia Island. I didn't read any bad reviews about this place and it proved just so. We had a fabulous time here as well, with walking and snorkelling, even deep sea fishing one day!!

All in all I didn't have one bad experience, it truly met all my expectations, and more!

Thanks for report. I got back from two months in Madagascar last Wednesday and it is a great place.