©
Flickr cc Chris
Madagascar Travel Guide
©
Flickr cc Chris
At the gateway to the south of the Red island lies one of the most beautiful massifs, criss-crossed by hiking trails: Andringitra! A real natural frontier between the high plateaux where rice is grown with its red brick houses, and the arid plateaux of the south, this geological curiosity offers a total change of scenery.
If you want to explore this landscape of granite-topped savannah which shares the limelight with its neighbour, the Isalo National Park, you need to leave the RN7 road and head into the bush and along the track. As everywhere in Madagascar, the farther you go, the greater the reward...
The Andringitra National Park will show you its wild spaces and its natural riches amid an amazing rocky environment...like the 'lost worlds' that you read about in stories. It's so mysterious and isolated that you'll be dying to discover all its secrets!
Are you ready to head off in search of adventure? Well, take the next bush taxi to Ambalavao if you can manage to find out where it leaves from... Next, remember that it's the average length of a feature film that separates you from Vohitsoaka, even though the track is only 37 kilometres long!
Welcome to Andringitra or the 'home of the spirits', a unique place that still scares the Betsileo and Bara peoples. Associated with a funeral sanctuary, these peoples have ancient beliefs which make them think that it is still inhabited by spirits.
Both scary and fascinating, the huge shape of Tsaranoro, a tourist site within Andringitra, is a post card view known to climbers worldwide. With its huge slabs of granite, its faults, irregular lines and cracks, the massif demonstrates its invulnerability to the passing visitor...
With its sacred forest, tall native palms and swathes of bamboo, this National Park was designated in 1998 and offers a wide variety of scenery beyond the chaos of the blocks of granite with their amazing shapes and the multicoloured lichens that carpet the shrubs, creating a sort of lunar landscape.
Andringitra, like many other places in Madagascar, is an area where a great many native species and very different ecosystems are concentrated. There are 15 species of lemurs, including around 150 ring-tailed lemurs, the famous, almost tame, lemurs with their black and white striped tails, plus several families of lizards and, on the botanical side, there are orchids and the famous 'Elephant's Foot' plants or pachypodiums.
The Andrigitra Massif is highly prized by trekkers, offering a chance to test one's athletic prowess in a truly beautiful setting! The high point of this sporting challenge, is the ascent of Pic Boby (2658 m), the second highest summit on the Red Island, but the only one that's truly accessible. You need about two and a half hours to tackle this peak, which sits on top of a ridge that halts the passing clouds so they water the agricultural plains below.
There is another great challenge for fans of trekking, with handrails to make the vertiginous parts more secure, and that's around the Tsaranoro Massif which takes a total of 7 hours of walking to a height of about 1,000 metres. As the sun rises, a glimmering light caresses this great, 800 metre-high granite cliff face.
The northern flank of the Tsaranoro Massif has a great view over the Montagne du Caméléon and its 1,450 metre-high summit. This trek is much less of a challenge and is a favourite with lovers of flora and fauna. It's a 5 to 6 hour maximum round-trip up to an average height of 600 metres through the sacred forest of the Tsaranoro. You'll get the chance to see lemurs in their natural habitat.
To ensure that there's something fore every type of traveller, a wide range of other trails have been marked out from Meva Camp, the main base camp for the Andringitra Massif where you can pitch your tent for a few nights for around 10,000 ariary.
You can choose from a restful day in fabulous scenery or a walk in the sacred forest with a tour of the Jajofo Cave, the former refuge of the Dahalo, zebu thieves. These short exploratory walks offer more than one chance to swim in natural pools by refreshing waterfalls. Fans of extreme sports can try paragliding or climbing along the almost impassable ways of the the massif that's known to be the highest climbing spot on the whole of Madagascar.
Less daring travellers can set off to explore the villages around the park that are untouched by the modern world, instead of wandering in the dry and hostile vegetation. These picturesque villages of the Betsileo and Bara peoples, with their mud huts, will open your eyes to a culture full of traditions and beliefs.
Here the legendary hospitality and joie de vivre that you witness give you a chance to really get in touch with local people, if you just take the time to go and meet them...the children will be the first to welcome you with warmth and spontaneity.
Adventure in this massif is not just reliant on doses of adrenalin, it can also come, quite naturally, from human contact...
