RN7 – Traveling on the Red Island

It's been almost a week since we returned from our wonderful vacation in Madagascar and I finally want to tell you a little more about it.
The main reason for our trip was to visit my dear friend Anna, who has been working as a development worker there for about 1 ½ years.
As befits our globetrotting life, the journey itself was an adventure. Anna had been at a workshop in Germany before, so she flew from there via Johannesburg to Antananarivo (the capital of Madagascar) and arrived there about 20 minutes after Felix and me. Felix flew from Rome and I flew from Jeddah, and we both met at the airport in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia) and continued together. Fortunately, everything worked out fine, otherwise our trip would have been quite complicated.

From Antananarivo, we all went straight to Antsirabe, a larger city about 180 kilometers from the capital and the place where Anna lives and works.

We took it easy during the first 3 days (when Anna still had to work), explored the city, and let everything sink in. On one of the days, we rented bicycles and went to a crater lake - through the city and villages - it was quite exciting! With almost 50km (most of it off-road), it was also quite an extended workout ;-)

Together, we also visited the market in Antsirabe. Just like supermarkets in foreign countries, it's always an experience!

On Saturday morning, we started on RN7 towards the south. Our journey would take us to the Ranomafana National Park, then to Isalo, and finally to the sea in Toliara.

During our trip, we spent a lot of time in the car (thankfully comfortably chauffeured by our dear driver Nini) because we had to cover long distances (sometimes up to 500 kilometers) (our total distance was nearly 1000 km), and the road had many potholes, so we couldn't travel fast (travel speed was about 70 mph).
However, this gave us many opportunities to admire the scenery, take photos, and make short stops.

Our first stop was the Ranomafana National Park.

Ranomafana means "hot water" in Malagasy, and this park is surely one of the most famous in Madagascar. In 1986, a lemur species was "rediscovered" here, which was thought to be extinct - the Golden Bamboo Lemur. This discovery was one of the main reasons why the area was declared a national park in 1991. We hiked through the core area of the rainforest for about 6 hours, seeing many lemurs, tree frogs, salamanders, giant ferns, and amazing lichens.

From there, we continued southwards and reached our next stop, the Isalo National Park. This park impressed us mainly with its stunning landscape. Within a kind of basin, there is a savannah-like landscape, and at the edge of the park, there are canyons, waterfalls, and small pools.
Here, we encountered the cheeky lemurs again!
Personally, the stick insects were the most impressive! For me, it was/is one of those classic examples where you only know an animal from the zoo and there from the terrarium, and you can't really imagine that they actually exist in the wild. And then, there's a creepy-crawly sitting in the bush as if it were the most normal thing in the world.

For the last leg, we headed to the sea, where we spent 1 ½ days in Mangily, near Toliara, and just let our souls relax a bit. Actually, we had also considered diving or snorkeling there, but since we were all a bit exhausted from the entire trip (saw a lot, did a lot of hiking, and got up early all the time), we decided to have a relaxed day at the beach instead.
(Besides, as is typical for the African experience, I had a nasty stomach bug in Isalo and wasn't really good for anything..)

Overall, it was a wonderful vacation in which we not only saw a lot and met nice people but also had a really great time together!