Please use the comments facility below to submit updates to chapter 14 (The North) of Madagascar (10th ed).
To comment on other chapters visit the main Madagascar Updates page.
Please use the comments facility below to submit updates to chapter 14 (The North) of Madagascar (10th ed).
To comment on other chapters visit the main Madagascar Updates page.
Bryan Pready said,
11 December 2011 at 3:44 pm
Antsiranana – Hotel Terasse des Voyageurs
New hotel (April 2010) on the corner of Rue Justin Bezara and Rue du Mozambique, next to the market. Range of different rooms over three floors; ours was double, en-suite, with hot water and fan. No restaurant but attractive roof-top bar and lounge (part enclosed), where snacks and breakfasts served.
Bryan Pready said,
11 December 2011 at 3:34 pm
Ankarana – Chez Aurelian
Basic but very well run, right by park entrance. There is now electricity from own generator, including lights in “bungalows” (actually local-style bamboo houses, containing just a bed with net). No running water but Aurelian (a former guide) employs lots of staff who keep the shared showers and toilets well supplied with buckets of water from the well. Good evening meal and breakfast.
Bryan Pready said,
10 December 2011 at 3:49 pm
Ankify – Baobab
Bungalows have hot water when electricity is on. Walk from port is pleasant; 1.5Km, shaded by trees, including flamboyants.
Sophie Lee said,
13 March 2011 at 6:15 pm
In Antsiranana, I stayed in Hotel de la Poste….If you are a lone single woman traveller, as I was, I do NOT recommend it.
The staff were lovely and very helpful.
The rooms were basic but fine, I had been camping so one cockroach didn’t bother me…and there was hot water.
However the other guests, were not very pleasent. I felt uncomfortable. I think this is a destination for Foreign Gentlemen who treated the hotel as a brothel…or something similar. The guests were predatory on lone females.
I would like to emphasise that I only had a problem with the foreign tourists.
Not the Malagasy people, who at all times treated me like family.
patrick marks said,
3 February 2010 at 8:21 am
If you want to see Perriers Sifakas the easiest place is the Anjahankely Project run by FANAMBY. This project is an eco tourism project with local villagers benefitting from the income provided. FANAMBY are encouraging reafforestation in some areas with native trees for regeneration of forest for the wildlife and in other areas there is eucalyptus grown for firewood etc. There is a super camp site beside the village with a long drop wooden toilet and trees with crowned lemurs. A tree nursery is nearby and a FANAMBY office is being built just outside the village. We had internet communication while we were there as there is a satellite connection in the present temporary FANAMBY office. The office is likely to be completed by now as we saw it in August 2009. There is also a very nice American researcher, Matthew Banks who has been working on the Perrier’s Sifaka who would welcome support for the project in this area.
The Perriers Sifaka we saw were a study group found with radio tracking and about an hours walk from the village across open grassland with some scrubby woodland and eventually the forested slopes of the hills. This area is a sort of transition corridor between Ankarana and Analamera. Access is by 4 wheel drive or ox cart to the project as there is no road only a very rough dirt track, but it is possible to get to it in half a day from Diego. We used local company Eco Tours with the famous Angeline as our guide.
patrick marks said,
3 February 2010 at 8:34 am
Regarding the Daraina area we stayed near Daraina camping on a river bed a few miles south of Daraina itself. This gave easy access to a group of Golden Crowned Sifaka that appeared more habituated to the extent that they would come to the ground and up to the guide. There is a possibility that they’ve been fed in the past but on our visit we didn’t do anything to attract them but found they approached us and we were soon within feet of this beautiful species. Plenty of opportunity for amazing wildlife experiences. I felt moved by the trusting nature and this also concerned me given the reports of lemur massacres somewhere in the region of Crowned Lemurs for restaurants, a shocking story.
It was also very obvious that the woodland area is heavily degraded because of the small scale gold mining by poor Malagasy families. They don’t appear to be a direct threat to the sifakas by hunting but by their mining they must be slowly damaging the eco system. We visited a village in the forest which our guide Angeline says has been set up with FANAMBY support to try and give support to these poor miners and possibly find them alternative employment. The miners were friendly and we had an interesting visit where we sat round the cooking fire and met the families.
Our campsite back on the river bank attracted local children who were fascinated by the vazahas, especially our daughter Freya with her golden hair. We enjoyed their company over a couple of nights around the camp fire on the river bed, even having an impromptu disco when our driver put on his car stereo to the kids delight. A lovely experience in this remote area away from the formal tourist set ups in some reserves.