Published in Diversions magazine

Far from Madding Crowds

Madagascar could easily be another world, since its unique plants and animals live nowhere else on the planet.

By Keri Harvey

You'd be excused for believing you'd arrived in an enormous playground. Multi-coloured, multi-storeyed houses cling desperately to the hillsides and have the appearance of Lego constructions. In between on lower, more level areas are rice paddies, resembling patchwork throws in shades of green. And scattered between wherever space allows, is washing, carefully arranged on the grass to dry and crisp in the sun.

This is Antananarivo, capital of Madagascar and home to two million of the country's 14 million people. Rated by many travellers as one of the most charming Third World cities, Tana is a riot of vibrant colour and the atmosphere is buzzing. Old Renaults and Citroens swarm through the city's narrow streets in a mesh of traffic chaos, and with no robots, the traffic jams are impressive. Drivers simply switch off their engines, wander the street socialising and then return to their cars when there's a sign of traffic movement. The jams provide constant entertainment for roadside residents, who press their faces to their windows in wonder. Filtering between the vehicles are also throngs of street children, who appear as filthy fairies begging at car windows.

In Madagascar, poverty is extreme and 80 percent of the population is considered poor. In many parts of the country, zebu cattle are still the equivalent of a bank account and are a yardstick of wealth. The rickety-looking cattle, with long horns and loose skins for heat dispersal, graze lazily between the rice fields and are the pride and joy of their owners. Zebus are sacrificed for certain important occasions, are good to eat, act as mules to draw carts and wagons, and decorate the tombs of the dead to indicate the importance of the deceased to the ancestors. At the market, zebu horn is crafted into spoons for sale, along with other traditional work in raffia and leather, real fossil shells and handmade paper.

Still, you don't visit Madagascar for the crafts or city life. The island has of the most unique and eccentric fauna and flora to be found on earth. That's really why you go there. Dancing sifakas, teddy-bear indris, lemurs aplenty; tangled rainforests, surreal spiny forests; avenues of baobabs, wild roses and trumpet lilies, neon-coloured frogs, two-foot long chameleons, carnivorous pitcher plants and an array of animals that consider camouflage an art - these are all fair reasons to visit Madagascar.

Berenty Reserve in the south is one of the best protected and most studied areas in the country. It's also home to the strangely human sifakas - the creamy-white lemurs that are said to 'dance' whenever they need to cross open ground. Though they spend most of the day feeding on leaves and shoots in trees, sifakas sometimes descend the trees and 'dance' to their next dining venue. Since their feet are designed to grasp only tree trunks, sifakas are unuable to stand or walk. Instead, they use their hind legs in a sideways skipping movement to get around at ground level - this is their 'dance' and one of the truly comic sights of Madagascar.

Ring-tailed lemurs are also at home in Berenty. They walk on all fours, have the swagger of a bandy-legged cowboy and the audacious attitude of a monkey. With their tails held up straight, swaying like reeds in the wind, the ringtails filter through the reserve on morning and evening sortees and will pilfer whatever they can - miaowing like cats as they go.

Also unique to Madagascar is the spiny forest of the area. It resembles a prehistoric scene; tall spires of thorn-covered woody forest tower into the air and appear quite surreal - especially at night. This is where the noctural lemurs of the area live, and their shining eyes can easily be seen in a torch beam at night. The grey mouse lemur and white-footed sportive lemur are regularly seen, and identified by the reflective colour of their eyes in the torch beam.

Madagascar boasts no less than 50 different species of lemur, and at least 15 species have already gone extinct since the arrival of man on the island. The lemurs range in size from the pygmy mouse lemur, which can sit in an egg cup and is possibly the smallest primate in the world, to the piebald teddybear-like indri - weighing in at about seven kilograms.

Indris live in the montane rainforest of Perinet Reserve in central Madagascar and share the rainforest with giant Parson's chameleons - up to two foot long - and an assortment of brightly-coloured frogs, birds and boa constrictors. These elusive lemurs spend their lives high up in the forest canopy, and only descend to the ground to lick soil for minerals.

Indris don't 'dance', but 'sing'. Because their territories are huge, they defend them with song, rather than scent. Their 'singing' is reminiscent of whale song, with occasional shrill siren sounds, and is most often heard just before dawn. The indris provide a haunting start to the day and leave a lasting memory of Perinet rainforest.

Though Madagascar is best known for its lemurs, the island is also an Eden for eccentric flora - like seven species of baobab. Most famous is the Avenue of Baobabs, near Morondava on the west coast. The tall slender baobabs that form the famous Avenue stand proud and regal, as zebu-drawn carts ferry their wares on the road below. At sunset the Avenue is a fantasy of light and colour - a natural theatre show.

Strangely, though an island, Madagascar is not a seafaring nation, instead the Malagasy eat rice. Lemur is never on the menu, as it's taboo to kill or eat the animals. The ancestors would not be pleased with such practice, and keeping them happy is paramount. After all, it's their mad and magical island - the rest of us are all just visiting.