Safari to Mandrare

particularly renowned for ring-tailed lemurs

Set in the southeast of Madagascar, the Mandrare area is the best known location in the country for viewing ring-tailed lemurs.

Although the natural landscape of spiny forests has been decimated by farming, the few areas that do remain are home to a very rich variety of easy-to-view wildlife.

The local Antandroy people also have an unusually interesting culture.

The area contains a couple of decent lodges, the unusually upmarket (by local standards) Mandrare River Camp and the historic Berenty Lodge, which is something of an institution in these parts.

The Mandrare area can only be reached by air from the capital Antananarivo.

The Mandrare area used to feature in trips quite often, but when the sister lodge out on the coast closed down, the reasons to travel all this way south were halved.

These days, you need to be pretty obsessed with ring-tailed lemurs to travel this far out of the way.

The usual stay duration is 3-4 nights.

Seasonality

The best time to visit the Mandrare area is generally considered to be May-Oct.

Rainfall is pretty consistent year round, at a relatively low 100mm/4” per month, mostly consisting of short tropical showers between prevailing sunny conditions. There is slightly lesser rain Aug-Oct, but probably not sufficiently different to affect trip planning.

The main issue is temperatures. For most of the year the peak daytime temperatures are around 25C/77F, with nighttime lows around 16C/61F.

However during the Nov-Apr period these temperatures can climb to 30C/86F and 24C/75F respectively. It’s those higher night time temperatures, along with potentially high humidities, that can make the experience a little but less comfortable.

The ring-tailed lemurs usually give birth in Sep-Oct, so there should be some cute babies around in the following months.

Getting there

The good news is that if you are intending to stay at Mandrare River Lodge, they operate their own plane from Antananarivo direct into the local airstrip at Ifotaka, from where it’s a short drive into camp. On departure the plane goes first to Fort Dauphin (in case you are combining with sister property Manafiafy Lodge), before returning to Antananarivo.

If you are planning to stay anywhere else, then it will be necessary to use the usual scheduled services into Fort Dauphin and endure the potentially rough drive of around 3-4 hours to the Mandrare area.

There is presently no viable option to connect these areas to the rest of the country by road, it’s just too tough.

The majority of our guests visiting in the Mandrare River area stay at Mandrare River Camp, doing so in combination with sister property Manafiafy Lodge.

This is usually done by using their own shared charter flights from Antananarivo to the southeast (on Mondays and Thursdays), first stopping in at Mandrare River Camp for a few nights, then hopping by air down to Fort Dauphin before undertaking the 2-3 hours drive (along some pretty rough roads) to Sainte Luce and Manafiafy Lodge.

On the way out flights return from Fort Dauphin to Antananarivo on Tuesdays and Fridays.

If you don’t want to include Manafiafy Lodge, then it is possible to use the same flight service, returning via Fort Dauphin to Antananarivo on Tuesdays and Fridays.

Alternatively you can use the regular scheduled services with Air Tsaradia from Antananarivo to Fort Dauphin, from where it is a drive of 4-5 hours (along some pretty rough roads) to reach the Mandrare River area.

Where to stay

There are essentially two main options in this area …

Mandrare River Camp is the much more exclusive, elegant and easily accessed option, in a more remote area further north on the river. It’s the only property in Madagascar that has the authentic atmosphere of an African safari camp, even if it is in a rural rather than a truly wild setting.

Berenty Lodge is a much more mainstream operation. Despite being so far removed from other popular areas in the country, this place has been around forever and has managed to make itself a stable of a high proportion of packaged trips to the country, with around 8000 visitors per year (which is loads by local standards). However their local patch of forest is considerably larger.

a very long way to travel for just one lodge