A different view of paradise

Finding Madagascan wildlife that’s worth singing about is easy. Finding accommodation in Madagascar that elicits the same reaction…well, that’s always been the tricky part – until now. We sent Mark Stratton to find the nation’s sweet spots.

Travel Africa, Spring 2007

"Lemurs,” exclaimed Pascal. “Some of our guests have been coming to Madagascar for years and never seen one.” This almost Darwinian-like heresy seemed to equate to going to the circus and missing both the trapeze and clowns. Yet the Tsarabanjina resort doesn’t possess any lemurs, and its clients, said Pascal, are simply content to luxuriate on the island’s idyllic sandy beaches.

It’s quite new for Madagascar to receive travellers looking solely to enjoy luxury accommodation and sunshine, as tourism has been largely driven by the island’s famed biodiversity. But nature viewing and quality accommodation haven’t always been comfortable bedfellows, as many of Madagascar’s parks and reserves remain remote and poorly served by mediocre backpacker-style hotels. The price of paradise, it seems, has been to tolerate dodgy plumbing and gaping holes in one’s mozzie net.

With a little research before travelling, however, it’s possible to find a select but growing band of truly individual and exclusive hotels. So, packing my DJ and binoculars, I travelled to Madagascar determined to view its evolutionary adaptations in style.

But what was this, I wondered, wading ashore from the launch that delivered me to the Constance chain’s much-vaunted Tsarabanjina island resort? After being given a welcoming fruit cocktail, I was not only encouraged to wander about the island barefoot (including inside the restaurant), but manager Pascal also greeted me solely attired in bathers, exposing a considerably hirsute Gallic chest. Standards, dear boy, standards. Had I arrived in Magaluf or Madagascar?

That said, it didn’t take long to cast away my flip-flops and engage Tsarabanjina’s easy-going vibe. This coral-fringed dot, 65km off western Madagascar in the Mitsio Archipelago, revels not in pretentious luxury but simple exclusivity. “We can’t call ourselves 5-star because we don’t offer television or telephones in rooms (although internet is available),” says Raoul, delivering me to my thatched beach bungalow. “What we do have is 5-star beaches where guests can live out Robinson Crusoe fantasies.”

I certainly didn’t need television. From my veranda there was a high-definition view of pure white sands and sea so turquoise it might make photographic filters redundant. The island is dreamily stunning. My fan-cooled bungalow wasn’t luxurious but informally charming; its adobe walls remained cool and my refrigerator was stocked with cold drinks to quench my thirst. Meanwhile, the neighbouring bungalow was sufficiently offset behind palm trees to reinforce my glorious isolation.

I could’ve done with a ‘Girl Friday’ though, as Tsarabanjina is best suited to couples wishing to enjoy a private week’s sunbathing and freshly prepared seafood at Tsarabanjina’s hacienda-style beach restaurant. For fidgets like me, massages, fishing, and world-class diving was available. Frustratingly (and rather queasily on the boat over) the normally placid Indian Ocean was too rough to scuba, so the dive instructor, Jean-Michel, showed me laptop images of scorpionfish, kaleidoscopic corals, rays and hawksbills. My compensation for visiting during December-to-March’s rainy season was magnificently bruised cyclonic skies that delivered jawdropping sunsets caroused by pterodactyl-like frigate birds.

Three days sans lemur and I was twitching. So Anjajavy, an hour’s flight from Nosy Be (Tsarabanjina’s connecting port) and 90minutes from the capital, Antananarivo, was the perfect tonic. Submerged in 450ha of wildlife-rich dry forest, Anjajavy is comfortably Madagascar’s most luxurious lodge. The Cessna flight there along the indented western coastline was bewitching: skimming over emerald forests and swollen rivers funnelling orange sediment blooms into the waiting ocean.

From the moment I set foot in Anjajavy, this privately-owned Relais & Chateaux property delivered 5-star treatment. The attention to detail mirrored upmarket western standards: from sprinkled jasmine and lantana petals on my bed at night to those unfathomable triangular folds on the ends of loo-rolls. Nothing was too much trouble for the largely Malagasy staff, although Greg, the genial South African boatman, did confess to once turning down a request to hunt lemurs by a nouveau-riche Russian client.

Anjajavy’s 26 mahogany-coloured rosewood villas possess broad verandahs overlooking the ocean, and are beautifully furnished. Queen-sized double beds dominate downstairs while a loft with single beds makes Anjajavy more child-friendly than Tsarabanjina. Given near-total isolation, and Madagascar’s frequent power cuts, the silent generators unfailingly powered the villa’s effective air-con. It would be good though to see them involving solar power to strengthen their eco-friendly credentials. But they have been replanting rosewood, a highly-prized timber that’s undergone serious decline across Madagascar.

Besides employing nearly 100 local Sakalava, there is also a strong commitment to the surrounding fishing communities. I joined staff on a Sunday morning boat excursion around the baobab-fringed coast to buy fresh produce for the hotel’s table from Anjajavy village. The market women sold mangoes, limes and fish undershady palm trees in the picturesque village. These ingredients contribute to Anjajavy’s Franco-Madagascan haute cuisine served in an open-fronted restaurant and bar complex. The menu is flamboyantly presented and intricate – where else could one eat carpaccio of zebu? And if at times I found the citrus-based sauces a little overpowering, it was pleasing that the chef made room for a nightly Malagasy dish. One evening I eschewed roasted quail with foie gras for ‘anana sy voanjo vary fotsy with green chilly’ (sic). No idea what it was but it was spicy and delicious.

What makes Anjajavy so special is how effortlessly nature spills into the grounds from the surrounding dense forest. I experienced everything from early morning encounters with acrobatic Coquerel’s sifakas and panther chameleons to audacious yellow-headed Sakalava weaver raiding my breakfast croissants. My personal highlight was a night walk along the forest trails with Anjajavy’s keen nature guide, Rado. Our torches picked out the shining eyes of sportive and grey mouse lemurs, and we startled dozing magpie robins and a brilliantly plumed cuckoo-roller.

Most Madagascar journeys will involve transiting Antananarivo, and this overcrowded capital doesn’t always receive good press. But it can be seen in style. Located amid the genteel streets of the historic old town, where boule is played on plazas around imposing 19th century missionary churches, is Antananarivo’s grand old dame: Hotel Colbert. Built in 1928, most guests now experience the 4-star Colbert’s newer annexe that offers everything to be expected of an international-standard hotel: satellite television with CNN, safe, mini-bar, plus spa centre, etc. For atmosphere, though, I rather liked the hotel’s less expensive rooms in the original wing, with its creaking wooden flooring and sweeping staircases.

By now I was itching to get into Madagascar’s fabled national parks and to see what accommodation was available for the discerning traveler. Arriving in Toliara, in the south west, I ventured 225km inland towards Isalo National Park. What abeautiful drive. Sharing the roads with zebu herds and overcrowded taxi-brousses, I passed villages of raffia-palm huts engulfed by yam and cassava fields where children yelled “Bonjour, Vazaha (foreigner) … bonbon!” The 81,000ha national park itself is crammed with fine hiking trails through tapia forests and has breathtaking views of sandstone pinnacles that resemble armies of Daleks. I also enjoyed magically close encounters with ring-tailed lemurs and endemic birds like pretty Benson’s rock-thrushes.

But this primitive landscape scarcely prepared me for the ambition of Madagascar’s newest upscale offering, Le Jardin du Roy (which opened July 2006). The proprietors, the Colombie family, built an adjacent hotel, Relais de la Reine, in 1993. It’s currently closed for renovation but its stone bungalows discreetly melt into the rounded sandstone kopjes. Yet everything about their new upscale offering seemed obtrusive and showy. The immense granite-faced reception-hall with hanging gold crown, where I was greeted with a chilled hibiscus juice, leads to a cavernous restaurant and bar then terraced swimming pool. The buildings are arranged on a lawn dotted with roy (acacia) trees and resemble lofty fortresses. Le Jardin’s epic proportions lend an eerily empty feel, although Anne Colombie tells me they’re planning to add 25 more rooms to the current 15.

That said, Le Jardin is probably Madagascar’s most stylish hotel. Anne’s sense of interior design has created spacious, contemporary-looking rooms. Split-level chambers blend violet-red fabrics with homemade rosewood furnishings and lovely iron fittings forged in Antananarivo. I liked too the use of energy-saving bulbs, while solar accounts for 20% of their consumption. The food is formally presented yet surprising: wild boar one evening and a rich chocolate mousse that left me vowing to take up jogging. After dinner, as a full moon bathed the sandstone outcrops, Le Jardin’s initial sense of emptiness became delicious stony silence.

A few days later in northern Madagascar’s Montagne d’Ambre National Park, I’d spent an enchanting morning under a dripping rainforest canopy of epiphytes and lianas. Despite the heavens opening, I’d been thrilled by snakes, pill millipedes, butterflies and frogs, and fortuitously encountered hedgehog tenrecs with litters of striped babies. I was watching chocolate-tanned Sandford’s bown lemurs when my guide John brought me the ludicrously tiny (about 2.5cm long) Brookesia minima - the world’s smallest chameleon. A gnat would’ve given it indigestion.

The rain intensified. So it was fortunate my accommodation, the regal Le Domaine de Fontenay, was nearby. Trouble is, I was soaked, mud-caked bloodied from leeches, and bitten by ravenous Diptera while lazy paradise flycatchers refused to budge from their dry perches and help out. My appearance was clearly letting the side down… What would the aristocratic Marie-José de Spéville say?
“Oh do come in darling and join us for afternoon tea,” she said, scarcely noticing my lack of decorum. From French-Seychellois stock, Zimbabwean childhood, and possessing a British sense of fair-play, Marie-José ran Le Domaine with her husband Karl-Heinz, her brother Raymond, and a 300-year-old giant tortoise called Galileo. Located in Joffreville, a decaying yet heavenly colonial outpost, their little domain is without doubt Madagascar’s most eccentric hotel.

Eight comfortable rooms are located in a tropical garden featuring birds of paradise flowers and traveller’s palms around a stunning 1902 cream-coloured mansion. My room was the former stable block with stone flagon floors; it was airy and superbly individualistic. Karl-Heinz’s quirky additions included a car CD player, wastebaskets made from bamboo, and a century-old grey marble bathtub. The resident green gecko came by himself. Hot water, but not electricity, was available all day.

I felt instantly at home at La Domaine, swept along by Madam de Spéville’s irrepressible personality, complete with her finishing school deportment and compulsory high heels. She was still on a high after a visit from David Attenborough. “Oh he was such a lovely man, I did so want to mother him,” she told me. Sir David must have sat, like me, in disbelief. Who else could’ve cajoled the Japanese embassy in Antananarivo to airlift wasabi sauce for one of her fish soiree evenings?

Indeed, Karl-Heinz and she cook gourmet meals for guests themselves. Dining is silver service in a restaurant with a fireplace designed by Gustav Eiffel. The highly-eclectic décor includes a model TWA jet, hawksbill carapace, and Nigerian ivory tusks. Then, if you have any energy (or blood) remaining after Montagne d’Ambre, naturalist Raymond’s night-walks in their 300ha of forest are quite unlike most. We couldn’t possibly depart before downing a rum and coke, and sightings of mouse and dwarf lemurs were almost as memorable as Raymond’s command to “Dazzle the little buggers with your torch; that’ll stop them in their tracks!”

It was just one more of a select band of truly special places I’d enjoyed on this incredible island. Hilary Bradt, whom I met in Madagascar researching the ninth edition of her guidebook, confirmed she’d been amazed at the changes in recent years in the quality of accommodation. “The country has gone from a destination for serious nature lovers and backpackers,” she said, “to a place where luxury-seekers can find perfect comfort as well as lemurs.”

Mark Stratton traveled with the help of Rainbow Tours and Air Madagascar.