Madagascar: The Lost Continent

I saw many different types of lemur close-up and the guides were incredible at spotting camouflaged insects and mammals.

Wonderful trip, fantastic leader, challenging country with immense poverty, government corruption and inequality. Difficult issues to face when coming from the west and our affluence. Wonderful wildlife and birds and insects. We saw so much and took some fantastic photos. Our leader Charles was the best organised, knowledgeable, helpful and kind person and assisted our every need. FAB

This was an excellent holiday which happily we returned from some days before the UK advised against all travel to Madagascar. Hopefully problems will be resolved enough for people to go in the future. Our tour leader Armand was truly excellent. Our bus driver and assistant did a great job on awful roads. Our group was a lovely group of 9 guests and worked well together. I was amazed how many lemurs we got to see and how close. The forests, reserves and parks are very good and the guides excellent. The evening walks were good as well as the daytime ones. The Tritriva crater lake and the Ranohira canyon area are spectacular and not to be missed. There were chances to experience local culture and see some dancing. The cultural evening at Ambositra was particularly good. I chose the optional snorkelling trip followed by lunch on the beach and can recommend these highly. The hotels are typical of Explore, pretty good on the whole but not top of the range. Minor niggles occur in the odd place such as only one towel for a couple, poor bar service etc. but mostly very good. The best hotel was Relais de la Reine near Ranohira, both for location and service. Most of the others very good too. But Artisan hotel at Ambositra had a very pokey little room and Feon'ny Ala Bungalows at Andasibe was truly awful with leaky plumbing. I would recommend taking a head torch with plenty of batteries and not just for evening walks. Most of the hotels have their own generators but don't always run them the whole time the electricity is off. Even when the electricity is on the lighting is often poor so the head torch helps. The food I found was generally excellent quality but often the portion size was rather big for me. I used a watertogo filter bottle to drink tap water from and bottled water for cleaning teeth and used regular hand sanitiser especially after handling money and I didn't suffer any stomach bug, though a few people did. A unique holiday - put it on your bucket list!

This was a fantastic experience. We saw so much amazing wild life particularly lemurs and chameleons. Charles our tour leader was inciteful, a true gentleman and took great care of the group. There were some uncomfortable long road trips due to the poor state of the roads with many pot holes. The hotels with the exception of Relais de la Reine were not luxurious but served their purpose. However, the wildlife we saw made it all worthwhile.

Excellent wildlife. A lot of travelling by bus on ghastly roads.