Early on during our stay in Mada we took the opportunity to explore a bit more of this amazing country. The Darwin Project’s trimester planning meeting in Antananarivo was postponed and left us with some spare time.  We are fortunate to have a small house next to the Ny Tanintsika office in Fianarantsoa.  This we share with a Dutch/German couple. We also had an American ‘couch surfer’ stay with us for a few nights. We decided to take the opportunity when we were all together to go on a tour of Andriginitra National Park. We did a bit of research and decided it made the most sense to engage a tour operator. They are called Chez Dom tour guides, and you can find them in the restaurant by the same name in Fianarantsoa.

Andringitra is not the easiest place to travel to by taxi-brousse (the local transport). We contacted several guides and prices always vary greatly.  Some guides quoted twice as much as others and didn’t even cover transportation. We ended up paying 400,000 Ariary each in total for four days (which is about $45USD per day). There were five of us. This included transport, guides, park entry, food and porters.

On the first day, we drove until about 3pm.  We stopped abruptly in a rural village, got out, and next thing we know we’re off walking. There was a bit of miscommunication, as we thought we had engaged porters to carry everything. Turns out they carried everything – except our bags.  Alex and I had brought a reasonably heavy backpack and a smaller backpack between us. It was ok though, good practice for carrying the packs. We walked for about three hours, which was quite strenuous as it was mostly uphill. There were some very picturesque views, abundant unique plants, in one of the remaining forest ‘corridors’ in Mada.  It really was quite beautiful. We got to the first camp at 6pm and were told we would stay the night there. However, we asked what time we would need to start walking in the morning to reach Pic Boby (highest peak in the park) by sunrise.  “1am!!!” we were told. We managed to persuaded our guide to walk another hour to the next camp so we could get at least another hour sleep. 2am we were up again and trekking in the dark. Our guide didn’t have a torch (so Malagasy) and we had to lend him one of ours. He had also been drinking a bit of toaka gasy (local rum) the night before and consequently forgot his jumper and long trousers. Needless to say he was freezing when we got to the top. He didn’t complain though, and let us stay up there as long as we wanted.

We reached the summit just before sunrise, and it was beautiful. Granite domes and ravines as far as the eye could see. We were the first to make it to the top and were quite possibly the highest people in Madagascar at that moment. We rewarded ourselves with some snacks, but didn’t stay too long as we got cold quickly. The walk down was also tiring, but rewarding as we saw the scenery that was hidden to us on the climb due to darkness. When we got back to camp, a simple breakfast of bread and coffee never tasted so good. After an hour or so of rest, the porters made it clear we needed to move again. They started some loud music and dancing to wake us up, and we were off. Another three hours walk (7 in total that day) and we made it to our second camp. The next day was a shorter hike (3hrs) to Camp Cutta. This place was really special, host to several families of ring tail lemurs and a natural swimming pool complete with bar serving cold beer! What a way to finish our hike.

If you like spectacular scenery and a decent amount of hiking, we heartily recommend Andringitra National Park. Relatively speaking, it is quite affordable and host to some really striking, other-worldy landscapes. Sometimes it really felt like we were walking on the moon. If you can go in a group of 3-5 persons, this is ideal to share a 4WD and costs. Don’t expect too much in the way of wildlife, however if you do stay in Camp Cutta, you will meet some very friendly ring-tails. Four and a half stars!