MADAGASCAR, THE BIG ISLAND AT INDICO

MADAGASCAR, THE BIG ISLAND AT INDICO

“Walking for this paradise, of giant trees, unique animals and coral beaches”

I went to Madagascar, to admire baobabs de Morondava, but I found with an Island of 1.600 kilometers long that I fall in love for her varied landscapes, paddy fields, lush vegetation, animals as curious as lemurs and magnificent beaches south and north.

In Madagascar, almost everything starts in the Capital, Antananarivo (Tana for friends), a noisy city that spreads by 18 hills, with street markets, a lake and a palace.  In Tana I familiar with the local currency, the ariary, I learned that rice is the staple food and rented, with my friend Patrick, a French guide who has spent years on the island, all terrain car to go to Morondava.

Tana Leaving everything changes. The urban chaos is diluted and overlook the Highlands, a green landscape of rolling hills, red soil and paddy fields. "The mixture of Africa and Asia in the landscape because the populated Indonesian island," he tells me Patrick. We passed many Taxi Brousse, minibuses loaded in excess whose drivers risk their lives to win a few minutes. In Antsirabe, 160 kilometers south of Tana, the pousse-pousses (carts pulled by a man) confirms the Asian vocation of the island. Here the road is diverted to Morondava through a landscape where meadows where grazing zebu alternating with sugar cane plantations and forests depleted illustrating the deforestation of the island. A tasty samosas (typical South Asian dumplings) served lunch in one of the many stops next to the road.

Shortly before the first baobabs Morondava appear, reigning over the rice fields. They are the type Adansonia grandidieri, reaching 30 meters high. The baobabs only grow in Africa and the west coast of Australia, but in Madagascar live up to seven species. Hence be known as "the mother island of baobabs" although the British writer Gerald Durrell (1925-1995) preferred fauna, whose protection is still engaged the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust.

At the entrance a sign announces Morondava school Le Petit Prince with a drawing of the Little Prince by Saint-Exupery. Further, a dusty streets and a beach battered by cyclones Morondava become a soulless population.

At sunset we approach the so-called Avenue of the baobabs, close to the city. The slanting light of late afternoon shadows lengthened and beautifies the red trunks, while a cart moving on the road. "I came from Tokyo just to see this," a Japanese confesses me with tears of emotion.

A few steps, a few baobabs intertwined their trunks: the tree lovers.

200 km north of Morondava is the Tsingy Bemaraha Park. It's like an enchanted forest of stone, with sharp limestone pinnacles that also populate the Ankarana reserve in the north. Here we must be careful with the fady, the Malagasy word for taboo and indicating, for example, you should never point a finger grave.

Madagascar is a huge island you learn as you go devouring kilometers. In my journey south, herds of zebu and Malagasy pastors, wrapped in colorful blankets, prelude arrival at Ambositra. In this city jams pousse-pousses repeated, but there is also a special agitation because Savika parties are held. We followed the crowd to a stage where young people trying to mount competing threatening zebu horns.

A few kilometers further, around Fianarantsoa are an ideal place to make a trek through rice fields and villages minimum field. But it is in the gorges of Isalo park with lakes and waterfalls, where the vision of lemurs ringed dreamed brings me back to Madagascar. Makeshift villages seekers sapphires, gold fever Madagascar, preceding later the return of baobabs in the Tulear region, a population that has sandy beaches and restaurants serving steak flavored with spices Cebu Island especially vanilla.

A few days later we flew north to the island of Nosy Be, where tropical vegetation surrounding beaches where fish, lobster and black coral abound. On the east coast of Madagascar there is a similar paradise in Sainte-Marie island with palm-fringed beaches and crystal waters.

Back on shore, we follow the north coast by taxi-brousse to Diego Suarez, a city which left its mark French colonial presence. It was here where pirates founded in the seventeenth century, the utopian republic Libertalia. "The booty was divided equally," Patrick tells me, "but did not have the local people. One day down Malagasy mountains and ended with everyone and everything. " Long time nothing remains of that ephemeral pirate republic, but in the main street of Diego Suarez recalls a painted utopia that reigned in the north of this island dream.