Wandering around Northern Madagascar, Ankarana

Hello Friendly Fins, today we digress a bit from the main topic of our blog, the SEA, to tell you how beautiful the land side of Nosy Be is too!

Are you ready? Let's begin!

First day

And here we are, after a few months of work we managed to carve out 4 days of vacation!

What do we do? Rest under the umbrella? Absolutely not! So what? Then let's go on a tour of Northern Madagascar! 4 days on the road with a 4x4 all to ourselves and a local guide who will accompany us on this fantastic adventure!

We arrive at the port of Ankify at 9 in the morning, it is always hot in Madagascar but in September spring begins and therefore it is the ideal period to travel without getting too cooked… We have a 2 and a half hour journey ahead of us to reach the first stop: the Ankarana National Park, on the central highlands of the North at 300 m altitude.

On the way to Ankarana

Village, Madagascar

The roads in Madagascar are certainly not known for their accessibility, few parts are paved and many potholes separate us from our destination, but we also encounter new stretches on which we glide easily.

The landscape is extraordinary! We pass from the mangrove, to the forests and cocoa plantations, up to the rice fields, crossing many villages. The guide explains to us that each village is specialized in the production of "something" such as gravel, fruit, cashews, iron artifacts, rice and so on. So we stop at the fruit village to taste these wonderful tropical fruits: pineapple, mango, breadfruit, bananas, papayas and this fruit called nona, it is not famous here but it is really nice, sweet and tasty!

Immediately after we set off again, Ankarana awaits us!

Ankarana National Park

The park, established in 1956, is home to the semi-dry forest and the grey tsyngy, special very sharp mountain ranges that we will see later. There are two possible routes: the first is a route with the Tibetan bridge that passes right over these tsyngy while the second is a visit to the sacred cave followed by a viewpoint directly on the tsyngy.

Although the underwater caves make me a little anxious, the terrestrial caves intrigue me instead and so we opt for the second route but first… Finally lunch!

And here we are having a nice picnic in the heart of the semi-dry forest, nothing is missing: rice, chicken, boiled vegetables with duck eggs and finally the delicious fruit, but we are not the only ones who love tropical fruit! Within a few minutes, none other than… Crowned lemurs begin to descend from the trees!

Lemur

We find ourselves surrounded by these incredible animals: with their soft little hands they come closer to search for bananas! What can I say, for us who love animals, this trip starts off really well! But it's time to get going now.

The sacred cave

After a half hour walk and about fifty steps, this gigantic cave opens up before us, a wonderful sight that leaves us breathless: we begin to enter and immediately meet its guardians: bats and hundreds of them! They fly and rest upside down attached to the ceiling of the cave.

We continue, we only have the light of a torch and everything is very mysterious and exciting, after all we are in the heart of Madagascar in a sacred cave!

The cave reveals itself to be wonderfully beautiful with its stalactites and stalagmites, their color is bright and they create decorations that remind me of brain coral and shark jaws, (how perfect is Nature?)

stalactites and stalagmites

The cave is full of very different chambers: some have very elongated stalagmites while others look like panettone and finally, in the innermost part of the cave, where it is completely dark and the few life forms are some insects and small bats, the guide invites us to turn off all the lights and say a prayer... The main religion of Madagascar is in fact animism or the veneration of Nature and what better place than this to try such a mystical experience?

We leave the cave. Each with their own thoughts, I was the first to be astonished by the visit that did not stop at a sterile trip but allowed us to get to know this sacred place better and feel part of it.

Going up towards the top of these plateaus here we are overlooking the viewpoint on the gray tsyngy: particular limestone formations resulting from the fossilization of Jurassic shells, later smoothed by water and wind. This area is in fact rich in underground rivers that over the millennia have dug and contributed to this scenario.

Observing them so imposing and pointed made me think of incorruptible and severe guardians of this primordial landscape, where access to man is permitted in a small part and only to give him a taste of how much Nature is capable of performing marvelous works.

tsyngy grigi

Night at Ankarana Lodge

We leave the park with a bit of melancholy, it was a surreal experience and it's only the first day! By now we are close to sunset, it's time to go and settle in for the night in one of the lodges around the park: the Ankarana Lodge.

(https://yorkpareik.wixsite.com/ankarana-lodge-en).

A lodge entirely immersed in the semi-dry forest with the imposing tsyngy around it. The small room in essential Malagasy style is perfectly in line with the wild environment in which we find ourselves but the most incredible thing is the restaurant immersed among the tsyngy: a walkway takes us to this small room immersed in the forest, a marvel!

Now used to living by the sea, at 300 m altitude there was a nice cool breeze, after a delicious local dinner, we decided to retreat but we hadn't taken into account the Milky Way hurled forcefully above us...

The closest and brightest stars I've ever seen! As a first day we can't ask for more!

Where are we going tomorrow? Click here!