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Hilary Bradt
Publisher, travel writer, lecturer and sculptor
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I just went to Toamasina train station (August 2019) and was told that there have been no passenger trains since 2018 because of a fault.
In Manakara, I stayed at the Antemoro, which is indeed a lovely hotel. Very nice bungalows, hot shower, nice garden right on the beach, good food, friendly staff – what else do you want? Other than that, I didn’t see much of Manakara – relaxing at the hotel was really all I needed.
Vangaindrano is quite a lovely town – especially if you arrive from Fort Dauphin after two days of rough roads, ten ferry crossings and an overnight stay in a dirty shack. Chez Madame Huguette is a lovely and quite largish restaurant with tasty meals and fresh juices. However, they still had flying fox on the menu. This is of course perfectly legal because there is a law from colonial times that considers flying foxes as game. Almost a hundred years later (and despite overwhelming scientific evidence gathered in the meantime that hunting of flying foxes is unsustainable), the law still exists. Plus, nobody does of course verify if the annual hunting quotas for these animals are respected at all.