We are part of a group of six friends who have been planning an epic trip to Madagascar for the past year. We like adventure travel, and in fact the six of us met on an expedition cruise in 2013. So Madagascar was a perfect fit for us to tackle.
One of us worked with a UK-based agency to arrange a package tour, and the rest of us kept busy for the past year reading about Madagascar. After what seemed like an eternity of waiting, and a date change from September to October a few months back, the day had finally come to make our final preparations!
This overview map shows our destinations. Madagascar is huge, nearly 1000 miles / 1600km north to south, and driving anywhere takes a long time. So we knew that we couldn't do the whole island in two weeks. We concentrated on National Parks in the upper half of the island.
That meant no ring tail lemurs, but we'll just have to see them next time! We thought that our itinerary offered a good mix of coastal rainforest, inland mountainous terrain, and the piece de resistance - the Grand Tsingy! We would end our two weeks on a smaller island off the coast of Madagascar - Ile St-Marie - for some rest before we left. We planned an additional week in South Africa after the Madagascar safari but that was way off in the future at the moment.
It was going to take a very long travel day (or really, two) just to get there. We will start with an evening flight out of Boston on Friday, a Saturday AM arrival into Paris, then an 11-hour all-day Saturday flight from Paris to Madagascar (Antananarivo, or "Tana"), which would arrive after 11:00 PM!
After all that traveling, we will have to hit the ground running on Sunday morning. We'll see how that goes!
We were all packed and ready to go by Thursday night. We're going to be away for a total of three weeks so we had two rollaboard suitcases full of Madagascar (hiking and safari) clothes, and a third bag with nicer clothes for the last week in South Africa. We're planning to leave that third bag in Tana with our tour agency until we're ready to leave Madagascar. Other than small carry-on bags and some camera equipment, that's it. Hopefully we packed enough, but we can always do laundry if necessary.
One of us worked with a UK-based agency to arrange a package tour, and the rest of us kept busy for the past year reading about Madagascar. After what seemed like an eternity of waiting, and a date change from September to October a few months back, the day had finally come to make our final preparations!This overview map shows our destinations. Madagascar is huge, nearly 1000 miles / 1600km north to south, and driving anywhere takes a long time. So we knew that we couldn't do the whole island in two weeks. We concentrated on National Parks in the upper half of the island.
That meant no ring tail lemurs, but we'll just have to see them next time! We thought that our itinerary offered a good mix of coastal rainforest, inland mountainous terrain, and the piece de resistance - the Grand Tsingy! We would end our two weeks on a smaller island off the coast of Madagascar - Ile St-Marie - for some rest before we left. We planned an additional week in South Africa after the Madagascar safari but that was way off in the future at the moment.
It was going to take a very long travel day (or really, two) just to get there. We will start with an evening flight out of Boston on Friday, a Saturday AM arrival into Paris, then an 11-hour all-day Saturday flight from Paris to Madagascar (Antananarivo, or "Tana"), which would arrive after 11:00 PM!
After all that traveling, we will have to hit the ground running on Sunday morning. We'll see how that goes!
We were all packed and ready to go by Thursday night. We're going to be away for a total of three weeks so we had two rollaboard suitcases full of Madagascar (hiking and safari) clothes, and a third bag with nicer clothes for the last week in South Africa. We're planning to leave that third bag in Tana with our tour agency until we're ready to leave Madagascar. Other than small carry-on bags and some camera equipment, that's it. Hopefully we packed enough, but we can always do laundry if necessary.
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