Maroantsetra
Almost cut off from the rest of Madagascar, with forested hills rising sheer in the distance, the back-of-beyond town of MAROANTSETRA seems a suitable introduction to the wild and wet Masoala region, which protects the Baie d’Antongil from the rough seas of the Indian Ocean. The town’s rainfall averages around 4000m, with downpours almost every day of the year.
Spanning the delta of the Antainambalana River, this friendly settlement of sandy streets and wooden houses sprawls northwards from its beach on the Baie d’Antongil into a hinterland of rice paddies and bush near the airport. Most of Maroantsetra’s simple hotels, eating houses, shops and offices line the one main street, which leads from the airport into town. A crisscross of sandy lanes to the east of town runs out to the riverbank which serves as a cargo port.
There are no compelling reasons to stay long in Maroantsetra: the beach is a shadeless, working fishing strand rather than a place to relax, and most of your time in town is likely to be spent organizing a visit to Nosy Mangabe and Masoala. While you’re here, look out for some of the herpetofauna of the region, including brilliant scarlet tomato frogs (Dyscophus antongilii), easily found in the puddles and streams around the town’s vegetable gardens, and panther chameleons (Furcifer pardalis), the males of which are spectacularly emblazoned in ginger, green and ice-blue.
Réserve Spéciale de Nosy Mangabe
It’s hard to imagine an isle that could better bring to life the Treasure Island of legend than Nosy Mangabe. As you approach it from Maroantsetra, its steep flanks, festooned with rainforest trees from sea to summit, look all but impenetrable; low clouds drift through the dense canopy of forest giants and flocks of white egrets crowd their branches.
The island, thought to be one of the earliest human settlements in Madagascar, was colonized some 1200 years ago, and has a long history as a secure bolthole in a region of rough seas – though it no longer has any permanent inhabitants. European slave traders and pirates made it a base in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and most of its trees were felled for fuel and boat-building. Later the forest recovered and the island is once again thickly covered in lowland rainforest. Cultural artefacts remain here, in the shape of Betsimisaraka tombs and seventeenth-century Dutch rock engravings.
Wildlife
Just five square kilometres in extent, rising steeply to a summit of 264m, Nosy Mangabe’s big draw is its remarkable forest and wildlife. On such a small island, so magnificently endowed with natural riches, every step you take is a delight. It’s an easy stroll along the main path through the woods behind the beach, which is broad and level, and the best one to explore if you’re short on time. Walking here can be very slow progress, as you stop every couple of metres to look at something on either side or overhead.
Lemurs
The island is home to five species of lemurs. Three of these are nocturnal: a still unidentified mouse lemur, the greater dwarf lemur (Cheirogaleus major) and – notoriously – the aye-aye. Aye-ayes were brought from the mainland to Nosy Mangabe in 1966 when they were thought to be on the verge of extinction. They flourished here and were seen quite often for several decades. Since the turn of the century, however, sightings have been very rare, and with night walks forbidden (after two visitors made off with suitcases loaded with fauna), your only opportunity will be a highly unlikely sighting by day or a chance encounter at dawn. You will see their untidy nests though, and large of flakes of bark at the base of afzelia trees: Nosy Mangabe is the only area where aye-ayes are known to eat bark.
While you probably won’t see an aye-aye, both species of diurnal lemurs are likely to visit you around the visitor centre: the male white-fronted brown (Eulemur albifrons) is noticeable for his white beard, cheeks and crown; the plain brown female looks like a different species. The rare local variety of the black-and-white ruffed lemur (Varecia variegata subcincta) is unmistakeable and particularly inquisitive. Nosy Mangabe is one of their last secure habitats.
Lizards and insects
On walks through the woods, your guide will be eager to find you a leaf-tailed gecko (Uroplatus fimbriatus), an extraordinarily well-camouflaged lizard whose markings and scaly flaps blend perfectly with tree bark. If you’ve done your homework you may see the adult geckos independently of your guide: resting on trees alongside the path and measuring up to about 25cm in length, they spend the daylight hours asleep, head downwards, clinging tightly to small tree trunks. Even when spotted, they tend not to flee, but rear up, open their mouths threateningly, wag their tails and issue a high-pitched squeal. One explanation for why these lizards are so common is the strange absence of couas from the island’s bird list; blue couas in particular are very partial to soft, hatchling geckos.
Other lizards to look out for are the emerald-green, skink-like arboreal Zonosaurus boettgeri and its humbler forest-floor-based cousin Z. madagascariensis. Also down in the leaf litter you’ll find tiny Brookesiachameleons: B.superciliaris, with its comically raised “eyebrows” is aptly named. In the bushes, look out for bigger chameleons too, and for some huge caterpillars: one species, bright red, with large “eyes” on its side seems bent on convincing predators it’s another predator.
Nosy Mangabe’s historical sites
Nosy Mangabe’s only landing beach is on the west shore, where a glorious 500-metre crescent of sand is backed by a fringe of gently sloping forest, fishermen’s huts at the southern end, and the national parks office and some basic visitor facilities at the northern end. The walk behind the beach continues past the visitor centre to a picturesque bridge over a stream and a waterfall where you can swim, and then continues north to the Dutch engravings at the Plage des Hollandais (around 7km) – a crop of names carved into giant rocks on the sand, also easily reach by sea. The inscriptions date from between 1601 and 1657 and archeologists have established that, far being a collection of “Thomas was here” graffiti, they are the remnants of an informal postal service, whose carvers used this spot to leave letters, wrapped in tar cloth envelopes, to be picked up by ships passing in the opposite direction.
As you head inland, a steep circular trail leads up to the summit of the island and back again to the fishing huts (about 6km) via some old Betsimisaraka tombs and the lighthouse. There’s a map at the visitor centre covered with alluring pictograms of the animals you’ll see en route.
Parc National de Masoala
You might want to make the Parc National de Masoala one of your main goals in Madagascar: there is nowhere else like it in the country, or indeed perhaps on earth. Along its western side, the park is dominated by steep, north–south mountain ridges, and in places the rainforest rises almost straight up from the shore to misty heights more than 1000m above sea level in the space of a few kilometres. The park’s western districts have the highest rainfall in Madagascar, recording an average of 6000m, or more than six times the UK’s rainfall.
Masoala National Park was founded in 1997 with close support from the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society and Zurich Zoo, and at 2400 square kilometres is Madagascar’s biggest and most remote protected area, covering much of the Masoala peninsula. Heavily encroached by illegal logging, it still contains vast swathes of primary rainforest tumbling down the steep hillsides and right over golden beaches along the shore of the Baie d’Antongil. There’s a dazzling super-abundance of flora and fauna here, including more than a hundred species of palms, 76 frogs, 72 reptiles, 85 birds and ten species of lemur.
March, April and August are the wettest months and September to November the least rainy. The best time to visit Masoala is roughly from the end of August to December, ideally October or November. It still rains frequently during these months but the dry spells are much longer and the sea calmer. Access is difficult and needs some planning and flexibility: only one road even comes close to the park, and most visitors arrive by boat from Maroantsetra, either independently, or having booked one of the lodges that provide boat transfers. The rewards are a true sense of adventure and exploration in an exceptionally beautiful environment, with almost limitless opportunities to see some of the world’s most outstanding animals and plants in their natural habitat.
Along the coast
Most people arrive by boat along the beach near the tiny hamlet of Ambodiforaha, where there’s a cluster of tourist lodges stretching for a few kilometres along the shore. From behind the lodges, there are several routes into the park, including the Circuit Varignena, which starts at an almost imperceptible break in the wall of jungle just past the northernmost lodge, the Petit Relais de Masoala. It’s also a fine 3km walk along the coast from the Petit Relais to Tampolo Point. At low tide you can walk much of the way on the beach itself, where natural beachcombings (no oil or plastic bottles here), ranging from contorted bamboo roots to delicate flower blooms, add to the pleasure, though there’s also a trail through the forest just a few steps above the high-tide mark which provides welcome shade when it’s sunny. Along the way there are several streams, some easily fordable, others requiring use of the community-operated pirogue-ferries that stand by to carry passengers from dawn to dusk (no charge).
South of Tampolo Point, a 7km string of beaches borders the Tampolo Marine Park, a superb area to snorkel, but only accessible by chartering a boat for the day from one of the lodges.
Hiking in the interior
The only access to the interior of the Masoala rainforest is on foot, and this is hard-core hiking county: the paths up through the forest are often steep and narrow, covered in mossy boulders and slippery roots. There are rushing, picture-postcard streams to cross, decked with dripping foliage. The atmosphere is so humid that, despite temperatures in the high 20s, your breath mists in front of your face and steams up spectacles and camera lenses. It’s exactly like being in a tropical butterfly house. Water drips constantly from the foliage above, and every few hours there’s another downpour, interrupting the sun’s efforts to illuminate the understorey – and making photography, in the half light, very challenging. Biting flies (though happily few mosquitoes or leeches) add to the ambience. All the while, however, your discomfort is allayed by the continual distraction of a multitude of life forms, from leaping lemurs to birds in the undergrowth, frogs in tree ferns, chameleons and snakes in the vines overhead and a profusion of insects and other invertebrates all around you.
Flora
The forest giants whose buttress-roots you scramble over include 30m Canarium trees (ramy in Malagasy, the traditional source of timber for dug-out canoes) and endangered Dalbergia rosewoods (D. maritima and D. baronii), while the lower storeys of the forest are a complex ecosystem, with more than a hundred species of palm and 155 types of fern, as well as many orchids and other epiphytes and climbing lianas. A new species of locally endemic carnivorous pitcher plant – the dangerous-looking Nepenthes masoalensis – was recently discovered here, and hitherto unknown plants and animals from Masoala are described every year.
Wildlife
Larger animals to look out for include: the easily seen and very distinctive red ruffed lemur (Varecia rubra), a very vocal fruit-eating lemur which is endemic to the Masoala peninsula; the white-fronted brown lemur (Eulemur albifrons); and the very rare brown-tailed mongoose (Salanoia concolor), a fluffy-tailed diurnal hunter of the forest floor. Walking after dark, you may well see the eyes of a Masoala fork-marked lemur (Phaner furcifer) or, if you’re very lucky, the locally endemic Masoala woolly lemur (Avahi mooreorum) or Masoala sportive lemur (Lepilemur scottorum), both of which were discovered as recently as 2008. More than a dozen species of bats take to the night skies, including the huge Madagascar flying fox (Pteropus rufus) – often seen before sunset, flying off to feeding areas.
Birds of Masoala include the highly endangered Madagascar serpent eagle (Eutriorchis astur) and the rarely seen Bernier’s vanga (Oriolia bernieri), helmet vanga (Euryceros prevostii) and scaly ground roller (Geobiastes squamigerus).
As many as half of Madagascar’s estimated 400 species of frogs are thought to live only in Masoala, many of them completely unstudied, so that next to nothing is known about their breeding habits. Stand by any stream for a minute or two and you’re likely to spot several attractive species – hopping over your boot, gulping on a rock or on a shiny leaf, or kicking through the water.
Insects are legion, but the lepidoptera stand out: of more than 130 species of butterflies and moths, Masoala has at least five known only from the peninsula. The stunningly coloured, fast-flying sunset moth (Chrysiridia rhipheus) can often be seen flitting through the tree blossoms over Ambodiforaha beach.
Sava – the Vanilla Coast
The relatively wealthy far northeast coast is Madagascar’s prime region for the cultivation and export of vanilla, local prosperity being tied umbilically to the fortunes of the flavoursome pods on world markets. In the early years of this century this Sava region (named after the initials of its main towns) experienced an unprecedented economic boom as vanilla prices rose steeply – roads and airports were built and thousands of migrants moved here – and then a crash as vanilla prices plummeted. This coast is also notoriously prone to cyclones: in March 2004 it was devastated by Cyclone Gafilo, the most intense cyclone ever recorded in the southwest Indian Ocean, and a string of slightly less devastating storms mangled the region in 2007.
Today, Sava remains a relatively well-off area, with the surfaced road between Antalaha and Vohemar one of the best in the country, though the scruffy signs of bust-after-boom, cyclone damage and subsequent repair are everywhere. Inland, in the mountains west of Sambava, are the remote parks of Marojejy and Andanaharibe-Sud – very worthwhile targets if you have a few days.
Leaving the coast at Vohemar to cross Madagascar towards Nosy Be and Diego Suarez, the RN5A is extremely rough and slow. Part-way along this route, near Daraina, there’s the opportunity to see one of Madagascar’s rarest and most beautiful lemurs.
Plain vanilla
A native of Mexico, vanilla (which just means “little pod” in Spanish) was first planted in Madagascar in the 1800s. It is the only one of 30,000-plus species of orchids around the world that produces a fruit. To be exact, the 110-species genus of Vanilla is the only one that produces fruit – of which just two species, Vanilla planifolia and Vanilla tahitensis are grown commercially. Like many orchids, vanilla is a vine, and sends out aerial roots to its host or support. In vanilla plantations, the vines are grown on support trees especially planted for the purpose.
Vanilla – much taken for granted in everything from fizzy drinks to ice cream – is a serious business, and one of the most labour intensive crops in the world. Every blossom, for example, has to be pollinated by hand – in its natural state in Mexico, the plant is pollinated exclusively by a single species of bee. Although the vanilla orchid needs plenty of warmth, water and sun, it also needs a good deal of shade, so plantations are typically established beneath the scattered “forest giant” remnants of virgin rainforest. Once the pods have been ripened and picked, a process of washing in hot water and slow drying has to take place (taking several weeks) before they are properly cured and ready for export, with tiny crystals of pure vanillin, crusting the black, twisted surface. That substance, vanillin, can now be manufactured synthetically – to the delight of the big food conglomerates. Fortunately for the vanilla growers of Sava, artisanal production and organic methods also have a market, especially among connoisseurs of one of the world’s most underrated flavours.
Antalaha
ANTALAHA, with its airport, is a practical gateway town for Masoala and an obvious stepping stone for Marojejy. As well as the legitimate vanilla business, with plantations all around (and opportunities to visit and learn something about cultivation and preparation; ask in town), Antalaha is a centre for illegal rosewood exports: the trade has made some here very rich.
The town stretches for several kilometres along the coast behind the beach, which is protected by a reef. Even so, you should be very careful if you swim, as the sea is rough and the tides and currents strong: the port itself is probably the most sheltered area.
Sambava
The biggest town in the northeast, SAMBAVA is something of a regional tourism hub, and offers the only practical access to the Parc National de Marojejy and Réserve Speciale de Anjanaharibe-Sud. The town spreads along the coast between the sandy shore and a brackish creek, narrowing to a strip of land just a couple of hundred metres wide at the northern end of the centre, where the coast road crosses the creek and a river delta. On the other side of the bridge, the poorer quarters of town stretch inland to the north of the river. If you’re looking for beach time, you’ll find that the coast at Sambava is fringed with broad and beautiful strands, but the sea here is dangerous. The most sheltered area is the north-facing bay near the airport, 400m down the first right turning on the way into town.
Leaving Sambava northwards, the road twists and turns through a heavily populated region of farms and secondary forest, with numerous police checkpoints as far as Ampanefena. Further north, the scene changes as the road straightens over long stretches of empty bush and scrub, and spans numerous single-lane bridges before reaching Vohemar.
Andapa
Set beneath dramatic, forested mountains, in a landscape of rice fields known as the Andapa Basin, friendly little ANDAPA makes a good base for visiting the nearby parks. It’s surrounded by irrigated rice fields – this is one of the country’s most important rice-growing areas – and there are big coffee plantations on the slopes. The decent, surfaced road up to Andapa is a spectacular switchback following the course of the Lokoho River.
Parc National de Marojejy and around
Only opened to visitors in 1998, Parc National de Marojejy now vies with Masoala as the country’s most impressive rainforest sanctuary, its rugged mountains providing the region’s distinctive terrain. Marojejy’s soaring multi-green landscape, with buttress-rooted Canarium trees growing to more than 40m in height, is one of Madagascar’s largest mid- to high-altitude rainforest zones, and home to one of the rarest lemurs of all – the snowy white silky sifaka (Propithecus candidus), known as simpona fotsy in Malagasy. With a single baby born usually every two years, after a mating season that lasts just one day, and the world’s entire population of silky sifakas confined to these dramatic forests (there are none in captivity), it’s perhaps not surprising that no more than 200–300 silky sifakas are believed to survive, which makes it even more rewarding when you come across a troop playing and tumbling through the trees like animated escapees from a cuddly toy shop.
Ten other species of lemurs live here, including aye-ayes and the very rare hairy-eared dwarf lemur (Allocebus trichotis) – but no longer any indris, now only found in neighbouring Anjanaharibe-Sud. But the park boasts a huge list of fauna and flora, many of the species rare and very local. To focus on just one group: of seventeen species of chameleons found at Marojejy, five are endemic to the park, living nowhere else on earth.
From November to April, the Marojejy region is slammed by daily torrential rainstorms. There is some respite, but so much water falls that roads are often closed for hours, the trails become impassable and the leech problem reaches epidemic proportions. The best time to visit is from May to October, when it’s slightly cooler and – if not exactly dry – then certainly less rainy.
Hiking in the park
There’s really only one main hiking trail, and Marojejy’s steep, wet slopes are tough for all but the hardiest of visitors – there’s a 2000m altitude variance in the 8km from the park entrance to the peak. Starting from the visitor centre in the village of Manantenina (just 80m above sea level), at the confluence of the Manantenina and the broad, meandering Lokoho rivers, you hike or drive north for about 6km to the park entrance at 180m above sea level, following the Manantenina.
Once inside the park, the trail becomes steeper, with a 270m climb in the course of 3.5km to the first camp, Camp Mantella (450m). The Cascade de Hubert waterfall is a half-hour walk from here, but this area only gives a flavour of the park’s inspiring scenery – and while you might just see northern bamboo lemurs (Hapalemur occidentalis) there are no silky sifakas at this altitude. Marojejy’s prize denizen inhabits the forest from around 700m and above, where you start getting into highland rainforest. You need to be based for the night at Camp Marojejya, 2km further to the west and 325m higher (775m), to have a chance of seeing them.
If you don’t clock the silkies, the majestic scenery alone is still worth all the effort, with the rocky pinnacle of Ambatotsondrona – Marojejy’s icon – soaring up across the valley from Camp Marojejya. Geology lessons don’t get much more vivid than this rocky peak, demonstrating as it does the tooth-like gneiss scenery, with its sheer, hard cliffs facing south where the landforms have buckled and the softer rock has been weathered away by thousands upon thousands of cyclone seasons.
From here, west to Camp Simpona (at an altitude of 1250m), you scale 475m over the course of 2km. Most people don’t go any further, but if you want to summit Marojejy, it’s another half-day’s slog, climbing nearly 900m over the course of a brutal 2km trail that takes you out of the forest into a rocky and often misty, moorland environment, peaking at Marojejy summit (2132m) and putting you above the jagged, neighbouring peaks, with views, on a clear day, as far as the Indian Ocean.
Réserve Spéciale Anjanaharibe-Sud
The forest-swathed, granite Anjanaharibe hills are protected at their southern end by the Réserve Spéciale Anjanaharibe-Sud, containing some of the least disturbed mid-altitude rainforest in Madagascar. These highlands (peaking at 2064m) are akin to the Marojejy twenty years ago: immaculate, inaccessible and compelling – at least for now. Since the 1970s, ministers in Tana have stabbed at maps of Madagascar and lamented the absence of an east–west road link in the north. Many would like the tarmac that reaches Andapa to continue west, straight through Anjanaharibe-Sud, a prospect that alarms conservationists.
Lemurs found in this remote rainforest bastion include, as well as silky sifakas, the black race of the indri (Anjanaharibe-Sud is the northern extremity of the indri’s range), and most of the lemurs found in Marojejy. They all tend to be relatively shy, however, having had until recently little contact with humans that wasn’t violent.
The obvious primary destination in the special reserve is the hot springs, just over 4km from the rough motorable trail that runs through the reserve. It’s a real slog that takes a full day there and back, with plenty of river-fording, log-straddling and leech-removing en route. At the end, you have the reward of a warm bath to look forward to, and the possibility of seeing white-fronted brown lemurs (Eulemur albifrons) and occasionally silky sifakas along the way, in addition to innumerable birds, frogs, reptiles and invertebrates.
Vohemar
The small seaside town of VOHEMAR (or Iharana) lies off the main RN5A road on a sandy peninsula, linked to the mainland by a bridge across a tidal creek. Like Sambava and Antalaha, this is a vanilla and clove centre. Historically, Vohemar marked the northernmost extent of the eighteenth-century Betsimisaraka union. Long a trading centre, Vohemar was established on the foundations of a much earlier civilization – known as the Rasikajy – by traders from East Africa and the Arabian peninsula. There’s evidence of this in the extensive royal tombs excavated in the district, containing hundreds of skeletons as well as ivory, Chinese porcelain and Persian glass and jewellery.
Aire Protegée Loky Manambato
The Aire Protegée Loky Manambato is a remote tract of dry woodland, home to several troops of critically endangered golden-crowned sifaka (Propithecus tattersalli), one of the world’s rarest primates. You reach it by making for the small town of DARAINA, 53km northwest of Vohemar. This has little to offer, but you’ll find a few shops, a decent little hotel, and the office of Fanamby, a conservation NGO where you buy your ticket for the sifakas and pick up a local guide.
The best time to see the sifakas, which are relentless browsers on leaves, flowers and seeds, is early morning or late afternoon: this is a hot district and by the middle of the day they tend to stop feeding and take a siesta. Once you locate them by their calls, they’re easy to spot, with their soft golden-white coats, apricot-coloured crowns, triangular black faces and large ears. Braver sifakas will approach you as close as any lemurs in Madagascar, leaning down from the trees to examine you at barely arm’s length, before powering off in marvellously horizontal, 8m leaps through the trees.
As well as the sifakas, the woods have a population of aye-ayes (you’ll see their nests if not the mysterious beasts themselves) and an as yet unidentified species of fork-marked lemur (Phaner), a noisy, nocturnal lemur that feeds on sap and tree gum. On the forest floor, look out for minuscule and quite common Brookesia ground chameleons.
This whole area is also a goldfield, honeycombed with deep pits dug by itinerant prospectors, and you’ll meet whole families panning and digging throughout the woods: they can get up to 80,000ar per gram for the grains they find (75 percent of the gold price on global markets). The jury is out on the impact that gold-diggers are having on the lemurs (they seem to co-exist happily enough), but there is inevitable habitat disturbance and destruction.