The hotel we are staying at, Manga Soa, is owned by a 65 year old Frenchman who sold his successful hotel in France and went on a search to find a place to build his dream hotel. He traveled to Asia and looked at Cambodgia and Indonesia and then visited various islands in the Indian Ocean. When he got to Madagascar, he rented a boat and drove around the island 4 times trying to find a location for his hotel. He focussed in on this site as it had a natural sand beach and a raised portion to build with ocean views. He found that the property was owned by 4 locals who had options on the land.
After negotiating with each one he was able to secure 5 hectares (10 acres) to build. He spent the first period with a crew of 120 locals clearing the jungle and building a 5 mile road from the airport to his site. Roads in Madagascar are very poor even nonexisting. To build a road in the jungle which withstands the monsoon rains of Madagascar meant building a huge base of large boulders on which to build the road. It was a huge job. It took Jean 4 years to build his admin/dinning building and 6 spacious cabins. He also built himself a beautiful house on the hill with impressive views and a constant sea breaze. He was lucky to find a supply of already cut palsander lumber to do all his building. Palisander is a dark hard wood which is very beautiful. In fact, there has been so much palisander logged in Madagascar that it is now a protected wood and thus no longer available for construction. The hotel was inaugurated in July 2102.
Jean employs some 30 locals including a front desk and restaurant group of young women and one man who have all graduated from the local hotel school. The atmosphere is very pleasant and one can see that the crew enjoys their work and are well treated by Jean. Half the staff live on the property with the other half comuting from local villages. In fact, along the road the hotel built there are now small villages of locals who have settled and live of fishing. They supply the hotel with their catch so there is fish on most meal menus. The food is good but the standard is cebu meat which is really tough as it is never aged. As the hotel is isolated, we took all our meals at the hotel except for the one day we decided to go on an excursion described below. We spent our days lounging around the round infiniti pool which is kept spotless each day by one of the staff who spends 2 to 3 hours cleaning the pool.
When we left home, I decided we would need to take anti malaria pills. We started taking them while in Paris and we both started to feel poorly. Monique had cramps and the trots and I had the opposite effect. By the time we got to this hotel, we were booth dealing with stomach problems. In discussions with the owner, he indicated that they were no malaria mosquitoes at the hotel and suggested we use bug spray and get off the pills which are very hard on the liver. We decided to go with the advice and have felt better since. In fact, there are no mosquitoes here but we do sleep in a bed with mosquitoe netting. Time will tell whether that was the right decision. In fact, in my many years traveling in Africa I never took pills and never once was hit by malaria.
A few days after arriving we signed up to visit the local national park called Loboke. We were told that there were lemurs to be seen. So at 9 am a boat picked us up and drove us along the coast for 40 minutes to the entry to the park. In fact, when we arrived off the entry, the tide was going out and we had to walk about a mile to shore through mud and sand in very hot weather. We made it to the beach in full sweat wondering why the hell we were doing this when we could be sitting by the pool in the hotel... At the park entrance there is a village of some 250 persons who live off selling trinkets to the tourists coming to the park. It was like in China where one has to walk through the market to get anywhere.
Our guide, Armand, who spoke broken French led us into the forest. As all these guides, they have eagle eyes and can spot things we would never see. He first spotted one of the smallest lemur, about the size of fist. It was a nocturnal type so he just held on to his tree about eye level and we could approach him really close. He then spotted a rather large boa snake and a number of coloured cameleons. The highlight was a pair of lumurs, full grown male and female sitting in a tree about 20 feet off the ground. They just looked down on us with little or no interest. After about an hour, Armand set back to the village where we were fed a nice meal of fish and large prawns along with baquette bread. By 2.30 the tide was up and the boat was brought right to the beach so we did not have to walk again.
It was great to be back in the hotel and to sit in the cool pool after the heat of the jungle. Monique declared that that was the last forest she would visit. I told her that walking in the forest was not something one would do anywhere else in Africa or in the tropics, in general. The fact is that in the forests of Madagascar there are no poisonous things of any kind. The island slid off from Africa 65 million years ago but did not take anything unpleasant like scorpions, bad spiders, bad snakes, not even bad plants. Monique will be able to avoid any further adventures in forests...
This afternoon, we are scheduled to fly back to Tana as our flight which was supposed to leave at 8am was rescheduled to 3pm. This gives us an extra morning here and I see that Monique has already established here base in her favorite chair around the pool. We will be back in Tana for 2 days before heading out to Addis Abeba on Saturday. Having our guest suite at our friends' place has made this trip so much easier as were able to have breaks in our travels.
The pictures below show some of the artwork and flowers growing on the hotel grounds and some of the smiling staff. There are also a few pictures taken in the jungle and in the village in front of the national park. I find the smiling kids always make sweet pictures.
As always, I would appreciate your feedback and comments. Please feel free to share this travelogue with others who may be interested.
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