Southern Madagascar

Day by day

The itinerary

1. Day 1 · Antananarivo

   Arrive Antananarivo

   Upon arrival at airport in Madagascar, you will be warmly met by a representative, who will provide assistance and transfer to your accommodation to check-in. Overnight: Antananarivo – (B)

   Breakfast

2. Day 2 · Antsirabe

   Antanarivo - Antsirabe

   Activities: • After breakfast, road driving to Antsirabe and the Vichy Malagasy also called the Water city. Through the red landscapes and the rice fields of high land of the highlands with its vast rice paddy fields and its lateritic coloured traditional houses, you will be served by the easy contact of the local people, a smile of which is one of the best highlights of the island. • On the way, stop-over in a small city known for its traditional aluminium furniture’s workshop. • Lunch at restaurant in Ambatolampy. • Arrival at Antsirabe late in the afternoon, or ‘the place of salt’, an elegant city well known as the centre of the beer industry and we can smell the Star Brewery as we enter the town. Founded by the Norwegians in 1856, it is the only place which really feels and looks like a European city. It has a temperate climate and all fruits and vegetable, which grow in cold climates, are found in Antsirabe. Overnight: Antsirabe – (B, D)

   Breakfast, Dinner

3. Day 3 · Ranomafana

   Antsirabe - Ranomafana

   Activities: • After breakfast, a small city tour in Antsirabe. With its beautiful colonial architectures, this old missionary town still has foreign marking but the local life is totally Malagasy. With its cotton, beer, tobacco, vegetables, milk factories, this city is very important for the economy of the country. • Visit of a famous gemstone workshop market where you can find a lot of the country precious stones like sapphire, emerald semi-precious stones and some industrial stones of Madagascar. • Then take the south road with an interesting stop in Ambositra, the capital of woodcarving and handcrafts making in Madagascar, you can discover how those local people work on this one of the oldest tradition of the Zafimaniry tribe. • Lunch at the restaurant in Ambositra. • We continue to Ranomafana, an exceptionally rich high-altitude rainforest reserve where the very rare golden bamboo lemur and eleven other lemur species exist. Overnight: Ranomafana – (B, D)

   Breakfast, Dinner

4. Day 4 · Fianarantsoa

   Ranomafana - Fianarantsoa

   Activities: • After breakfast, morning wildlife-viewing expeditions in the rainforest of Ranomafana National Park (approximately 40,000 ha), with its rain forested hills and abundant wildlife, has long been considered one of Madagascar’s highlights, and is one of the most heavily visited of the country’s national parks. Its entrance lies about 7 km from Ranomafana village. Altitudes in the park range from 800 m to 1200 m. In addition to its densely forested hills, Ranomafana’s terrain is characterised by numerous small streams, which plummet down to the beautiful Namorona River. Although much of the region has been logged, the easternmost part of the park retains relatively large areas of primary forest. • You will go for walks in the National Park for several hours spotting some of the lemurs, chameleons and other animals. The trails can be steep and tough but generally the going is moderate. • Lunch at the restaurant in Ranomafana. • Afternoon, we leave Ranomafana and continue by car to Fianarantsoa (with a part of bad road) “the city where one learns good things”. This is the centre of the catholic religion and most of the best schools are found here. • Through the highlands landscape: rice paddies in terrace, everlasting hills, sisal ropes making this will lead us to the capital of the Betsileo tribe, the first town in Madagascar where you can find as lot of as church in a kilometre square. Fianarantsoa is the intellectual and spiritual centre of Madagascar and the second largest city south of Antananarivo. Overnight: Fianarantsoa – (B, D)

   Breakfast, Dinner

5. Day 5 · Ranohira

   Fianarantsoa - Ranohira

   Activities: • After breakfast, continuation to Ambalavao: after the visit of the old town and the surrounding cities of Fianarantsoa. • Visit of the Antemoro pressed paper workshop (this is a living proof of the Arabian influence that came to Madagascar since the 10th century), and also the local silk workshop. Ambalavao is known for its silk work, its tobacco, the local made wine Lazan´ny Betsileo its future world patrimony betsileo veranda architecture. • A stopover in a tiny Ecotourism Reserve of ANJA, a very interesting contribution to the local initiative to preserve this small wildlife natural place where under the flight of a Kite, you can see easily ring-tailed lemur, chameleons from the large Furcifer sp to the small brookesia genus, lizards and skinks, many medicinal plants still used by those people to resolve any health problem, poisonous or not – just ask them how to use it!!! • Picnic lunch. • As we continue, the terrain becomes more African vast savanna-like landscape, allowing the sky to fill with the radiant colours of the setting sun. • Crossing the Bara tribe villages, those people who are known by their special tradition that a boy to become a man must show his power by steeling cattle, that is why may be they are used to be very strong fighters! This detail is important for them because their territory is largely huge-opened. • Arrival in Ranohira, the ISALO National Park, the end of the afternoon. Overnight: Ranohira – (B, D)

   Breakfast, Dinner

6. Day 6 · Ranohira

   Ranohira

   Activities: • Full day visit of ISALO the Arizona Malagasy, a sandstone ruin form massif of 81000 ha that occurs three (3) species of lemurs (the ring tailed, the white dancing lemur, and the common brown lemur), a lot of bird with the park endemic specie Benson rock trush several types of reptiles from lizards to chameleon and snakes. By fauna, we will be amazed by those succulents dominating the hills: pachypodium and kalanchoe, euphorbia trees are there only home. • The walk will take you under the sun in the middle of this arid landscape then suddenly you jump over the natural swimming pools and waterfall. • Picnic lunch, then back to the hotel. Overnight: Ranohira – (B, D)

   Breakfast, Dinner

7. Day 7 ·

   Day 7