Northern Madagascar - Montagne d'Ambre, the Tsingy Rouges and Ankarana

The distance between Sambava and Diego Suárez is just 160 km, but I had booked a place on the weekly flight, after having read on the internet several accounts of 12 to 18 hours land trips. So far, my experience of Madagascar roads hadn’t been bad – the roads from Antananarive to Anzojorobe and from Sambava to Marojejy were pretty normal – but more on Madagascar roads later.

Upon landing in Diego, I was greeted by Patrick, a cheerful 57-year-old Malagasy that would be my guide for the next few days (I had booked with Evasions sans Frontières). Diego Suárez is a small uninteresting town over a beautiful bay; I just went there to pay the agency, then off to the Park Montagne d’Ambre. There, a quiet hike through a forest much tamer than Marojejy, where I saw a number of beautiful trees, some lemurs, the Brookesia (the smallest chameleon in the world, just a couple of cm long), several birds and mongooses, and the Europlatus, a gecko deservedly known as the “king of camouflage”. There is a sacred lake – as usual – where people leave offers to the spirits of the ancestors, like money and bottles of wine. The Montagne d’Ambre is a peaceful place, the source of all the water used in the Diego region.

I slept at the Nature Lodge, near Joffreville, a small quasi-ghost town once inhabited by people from Reunion that left in the early 70s, and the next day I visited the Tsingy Rouges, a most amazing place reached by a bumpy dirt road. It’s an eerie place, of extra-terrestrial beauty, where the erosion created strange shapes from the red limestone cliffs and the water runs over red and ocher sands.

Then I went to Park Ankarana, another stunning place. Goulam Lodge, inside the park, was a very basic lodging – no running water, 2 hours of electric power each day, but I’m experienced with bucket showers so I managed. And Ankarana was really worthwhile, I had two days of splendid hiking. The park guide, Joaquim, was an intelligent and witty humored young guy, we talked a lot while walking, and talking to him, and Patrick and a couple of other local guys, was interesting and instructive: they are intelligent people, angry about their corrupt government, the permanent African neglect and inefficiency, trying to get by in rough circumstances. As for the nature at Ankarana: chameleons, lemurs, birds, dry savanna and green forest, bat caves with stalagmites and ancient Antakarana tombs, and the amazing tsingys, black and sharp-edged this time but no less eerie. And walking miles and miles conveys a great feeling of physical bliss, while the mind wonders… Ankarana was a really great experience.