We did not go to Madagascar for the lemurs. We went for the giraffe weevils. We never saw one. Madagascar is a truly unique place but it’s not at all easy. Many roads are impassable so you have to do a lot of flying to get from place to place in a reasonable amount of time. It is well worth the effort if you have the time, patience and intestinal fortitude (pro tip: bring Ciprofloxacin.)

Some random vignettes from the three week tour:

We arrived at the airport late in Antananarivo, the capital city and shuffled into the immigration hall, lit by one dusty lightbulb hanging from a wire in the gloomy rafters. Ahead of us in line a man handed a passport bursting with cash to the officer who officiously extracted the currency and stamped him in. It was late but the city was bustling with activity. Electricity is very expensive so average people don’t have lights. The entire city is candle lit. The vehicle of choice is an antique Citroen which the locals zip around in with the lights off to save on replacement headlight bulbs. Indeed, the town is pitch black except for our hotel shining in the distance which was built by the Eiffel company which specialized in exporting iron prefab colonial buildings to impress the natives and provide familiar comforts to bewildered tourists.

Early in the morning in the forest in eastern Madagascar while marching up and down ravines searching for lemurs we eventually found a small family group of Indri. After watching them bask in the morning sun for a while they began to call across the forest. Their haunting song is truly unforgettable. You can hear a sample here.

In the south there is a long beach with several rusting shipwrecks in the surf. While walking along these post-apocalyptic shores, we noticed many people squatting in the grass along the beach. It took a while but the wind finally shifted and it dawned on us that the adjacent village has no sanitation so the entire population uses the beach as a latrine.

In the southwest there was once a truly unique ecosystem called the spiny forest. Now only a few small patches remain between the vast sisal plantations that have supplanted it. Within these patches are some magical landscapes inhabited by a few remaining individuals of some of the most threatened species on the planet. Now you can only get a carefully framed glimpse of what has been lost in the name of cheap “natural” floor coverings.

Up the west coast is the Tsingy de Bemaraha - a karst moonscape and yet another totally unique ecosystem -  but getting there is a bit of a chore. It’s a two day journey over roads that are more theoretical than practical with several large rivers which can only be crossed by floating your land cruiser atop a couple of leaky pontoons cheekily impersonating a ferry. Along the way there is the famous Avenue of the Baobabs which once stood in the middle of a vast forest but now is little more than a stop on the global instagram selfie circuit.

Finally we visited Antsiranana in the north, a storied colonial outpost in perpetual decline. The french took everything that was not bolted down (and sometimes things that were), including the transformers and the wires on the electrical poles.