'I’m sorry,” I protest, “but I still can’t see it.” The blotchy forest mosaic swims before my eyes. It feels like I’m failing one of those colour blindness test – the ones where you’re supposed to find hidden numbers in a pattern.
“But it’s right in front of you,” insists our guide Lalaina. “Look.” He draws back a veil of vines to give me a better view. Eyeballs aching, I redouble my efforts. This is getting embarrassing – and my wife is faring no better.
“I see it!” shrieks my wife. “There!” Her urgent finger indicates the very branch at which I’ve been staring for the last minute. And suddenly, as though at the twist of a focus ring, the image sharpens and I can see it too. Head down, and exactly replicating the bark’s mottling of mosses and lichens, is the Turin Shroud-like outline of a lizard.
A leaf-tail gecko in Madagascar Photo: Fotolia/AP
Evolution surely has few more impressive conjuring tricks than the cryptic camouflage of a leaf-tailed gecko. Imagine fashioning a simple lizard from plasticine, squashing it flat on to a tree trunk and then carefully smudging its outline into the bark – toes, tail and everything – to eliminate any telltale hint of shadow. Then imagine spray-painting the whole thing in one sweep so that branch and gecko blend into a seamless forest canvas. We gape, speechless at nature’s artistry.
We are five days into our family adventure and we are discovering that Madagascar truly is the land of the unique. This extraordinary island, marooned during the break-up of the Gondwana supercontinent some 165 million years ago, carries a cargo of fauna and flora found nowhere else on earth. There are the famous lemurs, of course – at least 100 species of these beguiling primates. But that’s not all: some 80 per cent of Madagascar’s plant species are endemic, Lalaina tells us, as are 90 per cent of its reptiles.
What these statistics don’t convey, however, is that Madagascar is also the land of the bizarre. When we arrived two days previously in Andasibe National Park, a rainforest reserve in the central highlands, things turned weird before we had even left the car park.
First came an extraordinary little insect, with the body of a mini tomato and the neck of an angle-poise lamp. This was a giraffe-necked weevil; its ludicrous-looking appendage serving, apparently, to roll leaves into tubes for its eggs. The next bush produced a Parson’s chameleon. This prehistoric-looking reptile – the largest among numerous chameleon species here – froze at our approach, one tong-like hand extended and gun-turret eyes swivelling. My daughter’s outstretched phone brought a flush of angry orange down its lime-green flank. We left it to its own devices.
Baobab trees in Madagascar Photo: Fotolia/AP
And then there were the noises. No sooner had we hit the trail than a keening lamentation – for all the world like distant, sad humpback whales – came drifting over the forest. This eerie sound, explained Lalaina, was the territorial song of the indri, Madagascar’s largest lemur. Just as I was wishing we were closer, an answering call of impressive volume struck up right overhead. And there was the singer: a bundle of black and white fur folded into a tree fork. He glared down, showing teddy-bear ears and blazing amber eyes, then unfurled long limbs and sprang away through the forest, trunk to trunk. Above him the female remained in situ, baby peeking at us from below her armpit.
Andasibe, for all its riches, is secondary forest, its larger trees lost to “tavy” (slash-and-burn agriculture) long before the region became a reserve. For true primary forest – and a glimpse of what the whole of eastern Madagascar once looked like – we set out the next morning to Mantadia National Park, its wilder neighbour. This, Lalaiana assured us, was a lemur haven. But we’d have to work for them.
The dawn mist was still lifting as we filed reverentially into this cathedral of green. And the going soon became tough: an obstacle course of serpentine buttress roots, tripwire vines and crumbling logs.
At first the wildlife came in hints and glimpses: a praying mantis swaying beneath a leaf; a flash of red as a paradise flycatcher flitted away. But, with patience – and the eagle eyes of our ranger – more substantial rewards arrived. We spied nocturnal woolly lemurs peeking sleepily from a bamboo thicket and rare black-and-white ruffed lemurs cavorting in the canopy. Best of all, panting with exertion after a sweaty uphill scramble, we found ourselves among a feeding party of diademed sifakas. These stunning lemurs, decked out in luxuriant white, apricot and charcoal, seemed unfazed by our presence, and we crept close enough to admire their neat fingernails.
Antananarivo, Madagascar Photo: Fotolia/AP
The next day, back in the chaotic capital Antananarivo (“Tana”, for the tongue-tied visitor), we discover that Madagascar’s culture is as unique as its nature. In defiance of geography, the city’s teeming street markets and encircling paddy fields suggest south-east Asia rather than Africa. Indeed, most historians believe that Madagascar’s first settlers hailed from Indonesia. Either way, the subsequent stirring in of African, Indian and Arabic influences has created a rich cultural melting pot.
Underlying this culture is a still-thriving belief in the spiritual power of the razana, or ancestors. We learn something of this on a dusty hillside in Alasora suburb where, after purifying our feet in a sacred spring, we visit the nearby shrine of an ancient king. “I hope you haven’t eaten garlic, pork, lemon or onion,” whispers our guide, Jenny. “Those are all fady here.”
Fady is a tricky concept for outsiders to grasp, let alone obey. It describes a system of spiritual taboos that govern traditional life across the island. Some are universal, others regional. Among the Merina people, for instance, it is fady to pass someone an egg directly (you must place it on the ground); among the Tsimihety, it is fady to work the land on Tuesdays.
We also visit some of the city’s many thriving community enterprises. At a local pottery, Jerome, now 80, crouches at his potter’s wheel while his granddaughter lays out soft sausages of clay, ready for working. At the Amabalambahoaka metalworks, we meet a community of disabled artisans fashioning recycled scraps from car parts and oil drums into intricate lampshades and sculpted baobab trees.
Tsingy in Diego Suarez, Madagascar Photo: Fotolia/AP
Three days later and some 500 miles to the north – courtesy of a domestic flight to Diego Suarez – we find ourselves edging along an underground passage, with only a park ranger’s torch beam to guide us. “Watch for scorpions on the wall,” he warns. With a steep drop to our right, and the world’s only cave-dwelling crocodiles reputedly lurking at the bottom, this is not reassuring. As the passage opens into a cavern, bats flutter around our heads, casting wild torchlit shadows against glistening stalactites. I force a quip to my daughter about Scooby Doo but succeed only in revealing my age.
We’re in Ankarana National Park, an extraordinary wilderness virtually unknown in the West until the explorations of Frenchman Jean Duflos in the 1960s. And as if the bat/croc/scorpion combo is not unsettling enough, there is also the grisly local history. It was in this cave system, in pre-colonial times, that the locals holed up under siege from the Merina invaders from the south. Most starved to death. Today it remains fady for anybody of Merina stock to enter. Our guide Rija, who hails from Tana, waits outside.
Above Ankarana’s caves and sinkholes stretches a bizarre (again!) landscape of blade-like limestone formations called tsingy, the work of millions of years of erosion. During the rains, fierce torrents rage beneath the fissured pinnacles and crevices. We traverse the hostile-looking terrain by means of a narrow rubble path and the odd rope bridge. It is hot and exposed, and the plant life – spiny succulents and poisonous euphorbias – looks no friendlier than the razor-sharp rock to which it clings. Naturalists have discovered numerous new species lurking down the cracks, Rija tells us. Rather them than me.
Antananarivo, Madagascar Photo: Fotolia/AP
After crossing the tsingy – derived from “mitsingi”, meaning “walking on tiptoe” – it’s a relief to regain the surrounding shade. The dry, deciduous forest here is very different from the lush greenery of Andasibe. Kapoks and baobabs tower over the crunchy leaf-litter while local oddities include the bulging Adania olabuensis, or “lady’s buttock tree”, which squats beside the path like a Henry Moore sculpture. Back at the picnic site we find Madagascar bee-eaters darting overhead, a kaleidoscopic panther chameleon creeping up a vine and crowned lemurs – another local special – leaping around in hope of handouts.
Amid the intrigues of nature and culture, it’s easy to forget that Madagascar is a tropical island – albeit one larger than France. But this is, after all, a family holiday. Thus we end our trip on the resort island of Nosy Be – a short speedboat ride off the northwest coast.
Direct flights from Milan, apparently, bring crowds of Italian sun-seekers to the island’s northern coast. At Nosy Be Lodge in the south-west, however, our chalet nestles discreetly beneath the coconut palms overlooking a delightfully quiet beach. With the sea in front, a sparkling pool behind and a restaurant that serves prawn kebabs and barracuda steaks fresh from the ocean, this is the perfect retreat after our jungle exertions.
By day, the beach traffic is endlessly diverting, from women bearing multi-coloured piles of “lamba” sarongs to a fisherman hauling a sailfish longer than himself from his dugout pirogue. After dark, courtesy of my daughter’s smartphone app, we trace the constellations of the crowded southern sky: Scorpio, Sagittarius and, of course, the Southern Cross.
Nosy Be beach, Madagascar Photo: Fotolia/AP
But in Madagascar there is only so long you can remain inactive. Half an hour by motor launch takes us to the marine reserve of Nosy Tanikely, where we don snorkelling gear to explore the limpid waters. Reef-fish swirl among the corals, while we peer down on giant clams and porcupine-like sea urchins. Further out, a large shadow rises from the seabed. It’s a green turtle. We swim above the great reptile, looking down on to its crazy-paving carapace, before it outpaces us with languid flipper strokes and melts away into the blue.
And we’re not done with lemurs yet. Beyond the mangroves in the island’s south-east we find Ampasipohy village, gateway to the bijou Lokobe Reserve. A trail winds up from the beach into a tangle of moist deciduous forest.
Black lemurs – endemic to this area – watch from the canopy as we creep along the trail below. We also find a tiny dwarf chameleon in the leaf-litter, a roosting Madagascar scops owl tucked inside a thicket and a substantial Madagascar ground boa slithering (despite its name) up a tree trunk.
And then comes the inevitable. Our guide, Olivio, pauses in front of a mossy tree trunk and, with a flourish, pulls back a branch. “Can you see the leaf-tailed gecko?”
“Erm … sort of,” I fib. And, hoping he won’t call my bluff, I snap a few photos. There are some things in Madagascar, it seems, that you are just not meant to see.
Mike Unwin travelled to Madagascar as a guest of Rainbow Tours (020 3733 5050; rainbowtours.co.uk). Its 13-night “Madagascar family holiday – wildlife and beach”, taking in Andasibe-Mantadia National Park, Ankarana National Park, Nosy Be and Antananarivo, costs from £2,785 per person sharing. The price includes international flights, domestic flights and transfers, all accommodation and most meals, expert English-speaking guides and return flights with Air France via Paris Charles de Gaulle.