Madagascar

This southern African country has been a unique meeting place for nature-lovers from all over the world. It's the world's fourth largest island and has a kaleidoscope of 14 million residents of African, Arabian and Asian descend.  Antananarivo is this island's capital, nestled under the massive (8,671 ft) Ankaratra Mountains.

Cut off from the African mainland for millions of years, Madagascar's teeming forests are a naturalist's dream. They've preserved oddities and developed specialisations found nowhere else on earth, and you can get among them in a spectacular collection of accessible national parks. Sheltering more than 10,000 varieties of plants and an enormous variety of unique animal life, including half the world's chameleon varieties, 300 species of butterflies, 28 kinds of bats, 150 types of frogs and 260 different reptiles, and 32 species of primates which are all endemic to Madagascar.

The Island is a melting-pot of ethnic groups: Malayo-Indonesian (Merina and related Betsileo), Cotiers (mixed African, Malayo-Indonesian, and Arab ancestry - Betsimisaraka, Tsimihety, Antaisaka, Sakalava), French, Indian, Creole and Comoran. Major ethnic groups in the interior are the Merina (Hova) and the related Betsileo. The coastal areas are inhabited mainly by peoples of mixed Malayo-Indonesian, black African, and Arab ancestry.