advise for tourguide or car with a driver in Madagascar

I´m planning a trip to Madagascar from the 3rd of July to the 15th of July and have been looking in to different options.
Neither me or my travel companion speak fluid French.
We have come across a company called Gassitour. Does anybody about this company? Or can anybody give advises about other tour companies or companies where you can rent a car with a driver?

We used Ramartours (www.ramartour.com) in November with the car and driver only service (although they do also do tours) and they were excellent and reasonably priced too and they have drivers that speak English and can recommend good English-speaking guides at each of the parks.

language shouldn't be a problem - I don't speak any French and had no problems
must a have a guide for all the parks so choose an English speaking guide at gate or get driver to find one with knowledge of your interests
compare a few Madagascar based companies

just saw you are from Denmark
there are guides who speak other languages as well but not sure about Danish

Thank you for your suggestions. I will look into the different options.

Backpacking is possible in Madagascar. A good guide book should be OK. just in case.

I keep meaning to write up a trip report to post here, but just haven't found the time to sit down and do it justice. Needless to say, the 15 days I had in Madagascar last October/November would go down as some of the best holiday time I've ever had. I've attached our itinerary for you to check out - we wrote the itinerary ourselves after doing a fair bit of research....

I started off emailing agents in Madagascar with our time frame (2 to 2.5 weeks), vague budget, and my "must sees" - lemurs, chameleons, baobabs, beach. I got many different itineraries sent back, but soon realised that the 2 weeks would not be enough to do more than one section of the country... we settled on the south to west, as it seemed to fit in better with our Lemur wishes.

I then went through the itineraries that had gone to this section of Madagascar to see how long they were spending in each National Park, and basically wrote the itinerary we wanted from there. We also went through both Lonely Planet and TripAdvisor reviews to choose the places we wanted to stay, and got several agents to quote on it for us. We got some quotes twice the price of others (keeping in mind we had specified the type of room in the specific lodge we wanted, and the same amount of days, meals, park fees included!), and ended up settling on one of the lower cost operators - but one who had answered all my questions, and had gotten back to me quickly each time.

it turned out to be the best decision I made - Lalaina from MTTC, our agent was fantastic.. from all the planning beforehand, to the time we left, she did everything we needed! I didn't want to have to send all our money to her up front, so we settled on an amount for a deposit that we were both happy with - we paid the balance on arrival... the vehicle and driver she had arranged for us were great - almost new vehicle, with enough room for us all and our luggage... and the driver/guide - what can I say... he really did make our trip for us! I had asked specifically for an English speaking driver - knowing Mada is a former French colony, we were going to struggle with language, as none of us had more than the most basic French... I didn't expect to have a driver whose English was good enough to joke and banter with us from Day 1! Nothing was too much trouble for Fetra (our driver) or Lalaina... there was an issue with a room that was quite dirty (one bed had dirty sheets on it still) in one of the hotels, and they had it sorted out, with full apologies from the Manager (who they called and insisted that he go to the hotel and speak with us personally) - Lalaina also ensured we were refunded for that room, and had told the hotel that she wouldn't be using them again (until we met her at the end of our trip and told her the rest of the hotel was amazing, and they have probably had a wake up call on the standards, so please continue to use them!).

At the end of our trip Lalaina came to our hotel again to make sure everything went well, and I really felt like I'd made a friend - nothing was too much trouble, and she really went out of her way to make sure that we got what we wanted/needed. I can't recommend MTTC and Lalaina (and Fetra) highly enough - they really went out of their way to make our trip to Madagascar the best it could possibly be!

Hi Rastus

You mentioned you had attached your itinerary but I couldn't see it (more likely to have to do with my IT skills than anything else). I'd be interested to know where you went if you have a moment to post it or PM me.

Cheers