Madagascar is unlike anywhere else on Earth. The world's fourth-largest island, situated in the Indian Ocean off the southeast coast of Africa, separated from the African mainland roughly 88 million years ago. In that time, evolution ran its own extraordinary experiment. Today, approximately 90 percent of all wildlife on Madagascar is found nowhere else in the world.
The island's most famous residents are the lemurs — over 100 species ranging from the tiny mouse lemur, weighing just 30 grams, to the indri, whose haunting wails echo through the rainforest at dawn. Watching ring-tailed lemurs sunbathe in the morning in Berenty Reserve or spotting a sifaka leaping between trees in Kirindy Forest is one of Africa's most extraordinary wildlife experiences. Madagascar is also home to half the world's chameleon species, remarkable baobab trees, and fossa, a cat-like predator found only here.
The Avenue of the Baobabs near Morondava is Madagascar's most photographed scene — a dirt road flanked by ancient baobab trees whose massive trunks glow orange and gold at sunset. These trees can live for over a thousand years and some are wide enough for several people to link hands around their trunks.
The landscape varies enormously across the island. The central highlands feature terraced rice paddies, red laterite soils, and colonial-era hill towns like Fianarantsoa. The east coast is covered in dense rainforest where lemurs and geckos abound. The west is drier savanna and spiny desert, home to bizarre plants like the octopus tree. The north features volcanic peaks, coral reefs, and the emerald forests of Marojejy National Park.
The Malagasy people are of Austronesian and Bantu descent, a unique combination that is reflected in their language, music, and the omnipresent rice-centered cuisine. Vary (rice) accompanies virtually every meal alongside romazava stew, zebu beef, and fresh seafood along the coast.
Nosy Be, an island off the northwest coast, is a tropical retreat of vanilla plantations, ylang-ylang flowers, and clear water ideal for snorkeling and whale watching.
The best time to visit is April through October, avoiding the cyclone season that affects the east coast. Madagascar rewards patient, curious travelers with encounters impossible to replicate anywhere else on the planet.
