June/July trip to Madagascar.

Hello,we will have one of our daughters spending her gap year in Capetown and we are planning on a 4 week visit to her in June/July with our 2 other daughters so there will be 5 of us.we are trying to work out where we should go and have come up with Madagascar,we will just be backpacking so would love to hear from anyone who has been there.We are Australian and perhaps we could meet our daughter in Jo burg and go from there,many thanks,kindest cheers,Carol.

June/ July is best time to visit Mdagascar, If I were you plan your trip to the south west like stream down on Tsiribihina river then continue to the Tsingy then fly from Morondava to Toliara, have few days relaxing at Ifaty beach or Anakao then drive back to Tana step by step then continue to St Marie, don't skip off Andasibe national park and pangalane channel. This tour let you enjoy the wildlife , landscape, culture and so on.....
Good luck!
Terreza

Any advice to fly from Morondava to Toliara in June needs to be combined with a couple of warnings. First, there is only one direct flight per week, and the route is served by a Twin Otter, an aircraft with only 19 seats. This means that you will need to plan and book a long way in advance, as the aircraft will quickly be full. To give you some idea: I’ve just tried to book seats on a Twin Otter flight a long way into 2013, only to be told that the aircraft is already full – and that is on a route with three other direct flights a week with larger aircraft!

A further problem with Twin Otter flights is that they may not board your luggage due to weight restrictions. This happened to myself and my friends earlier this year. Not a great problem for us – our luggage was re-routed via Antananarivo and we got it five days later – but if you’re not planning to spend five days in Toliara, it would be very inconvenient for you.

From the second week in July, the situation becomes much easier, with three direct flights a week, two of them with much larger aircraft.

Without in any way wanting to imply that the destinations suggested by #1 are not worth visiting, they are confined to the areas and routes where you’ll find the largest number of other tourists, and if you describe yourself as backpackers you may want to think about other, more adventurous areas.

The Masoala National Park and Nosy Mangabe Reserve in the north-east are superb rainforest areas, for which the starting point is Maroantsetra. You can find tips on visiting these in numerous others of my posts on the Madagascar thread.

Marojejy National Park, also in the north-east, is another beautiful and relatively little visited rainforest area. You can visit this by getting yourself to Sambava, and can combine it with a visit to the eastern areas of Masoala from the nearby town of Antalaha. Or if you’re really adventurous, you can trek across Masoala from Maroantsetra and then visit Marojejy.

Both Masoala and Marojejy are UNESCO World Natural Heritage Sites (as are the Tsingy de Bemaraha referred to by #1).

Alternatively, the north and north-west have much to offer. Mahajanga is (in my view at least) a fascinating town, and the nearby Ankarafantsika National Park offers some of the greatest variety in Madagascar. The dry deciduous forest is different from much of what you’ll see elsewhere and is home to sifaka and numerous bird and reptile species. There are also baobabs and a lake with crocodiles (perhaps not so interesting if you’re from Oz) and water-bird species, and also superb and colourful rock formations in the Lavaka d’Ankarokaroka canyon (make sure your guide takes you down to the canyon floor if you go there).

Continuing (quite a long way) north, you will find forest, wildlife, limestone caverns and tsingy formations at Ankarana National Park, although these latter are not as spectacular as those in the Bemaraha Park. Finally Montagne d’Ambre National Park close to Diego Suarez (Antsiranana) is another beautiful rainforest are. Close to Diego Suarez are also beaches where you can relax.

If you decide to stick to the south-west as suggested by #1, then Lake Tsimanampetsotse National Park is a little visited park that, with a little effort, can be reached from Toliara, and Kirindy Mitea National Park (not the same as Kirindy Forest Reserve) can be reached, again with some effort, vial Belo sur Mer from Morondava.

These are just a few of my favourite places. Probably the best thing to do would be to get hold of the Bradt Guide (much as it pains me to say so, the LP guide contains too many inaccuracies) and look for yourselves at all that this beautiful country has to offer.

You probably also need to keep in mind that return flights from Johannesburg to Tana go for about 500 euro, and maybe your daughter could use some of her time to check out travel agencies in Cape Town to see if they can offer better deals.

The only thing that I would like to add is that you should bear in mind that the infrastructure is very "untouristy" and very slow. Going by taxibrousse will leave you with a lot of waiting-time, cramped legroom, and some long days on the road.
But you could consider renting a car with a driver for about 45 euro/day (plus fuel).
My advise is to pick a relatively small geographical area and spend time there rather that spending a lot of time traveling.
We spent 5 weeks going from Nosy Be to Diego Suarez flight to Sambava flight to Maroantsetra flight to Isle Sainte Marie flight to Tana. Enjoyed every minute but we should probably have chosen a smaller area.

Thankyou so very much for your helpful replies,,what would the weather be like,I understand it might be quite cool,cheers,carol.

We went for 2 weeks and thought it was fantastic. Friendliest people on the planet so far! Getting around is the major battle but other than that: cheap accommodation, great food, great people. The lemurs are cool and the parks we went to were awesome. Never used a taxi-brousse, just hired a car and driver, did a tour and took one flight. Flying is expensive there, if you do, book at the agencies there, it IS cheaper than what's on the website.

You'll undoubtably hear/read about:
Tsingy- neat, but a long haul to get there( 2 days of driving really), bumpy and hot roads, but get to see malagasy life on the way
Baobobs-lives up to expectations
Tsihiribihina River trip-3 days, a bit boring, scenery is ok, but meeting the rural malagasy that life along the river is a highlight

I also recommend the trip from tana to tulear stopping in ranomafana, andringitra, the train to manakara, isalo, and then ending up on the beach in ifaty-Mangily to do some diving and whale watching. Check out Padi dive resort Mangily scuba at ifatyscuba.com