Lyn & Roger Hogner

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Dear Desire,

Thanks for the welcome home message.

Yes a great trip enjoyed by all for the 28 days on the ground.. Only a few hitches but on a trip of this nature this is to be expected and relatively easily overcome by the party with and of course Jocylin’s help – our guide throughout the trip.

Well done for getting everything together to match our requirements and for keeping an ear to the ground whilst we were in the wilds.

Jocylin was a really excellent guide/chaperone/re-organiser/interpreter etc with a very caring personality. Very good at locating a variety of species plus info on culture/history etc. Very good at keeping us supplied with drinking water (essential).

We thank you for your patience and time spent setting up this unique trip – much appreciated.

Feed Back:

1. Anakao could easily be done in a day or one night only, if one needs to just go there for the two bird species (Rock Thrush, Red Tailed Tropic).
2. The overall routing worked well as it covered all the areas required. Trip could be shortened depending on interests.
3. Our weather was very good at this time even in the eastern rainforests (didn’t take long to work up a sweat on the trails) and of course hot and dry in the south as expected.
4. Although we had some long days on the road at least the journeys were under our control rather than Air Mad! (punctures excepted).
5. Vehicle did not have good tyres to start with. Otherwise vehicle was comfortable with good aircon and the driving good.
6. The two long road trips ex Ankarafansika to Ankify were actually very easy and didn’t take more than about 5 hours each ie road pretty good.
7. All parks were good to visit but we were saddened by encroachment, constant burning and slash and burn over most of the island! Madagascar will all be in the sea in 3 million years!
8. Guides chosen/secured by Jocylin were generally good. Some needed to improve their homework for finding certain species.
9. Local people friendly, helpful, non-threatening and sadly very poor. An interesting and different country.
10. We managed to see about 77% of the endemic bird species (very satisfactory) and about 28 lemur species plus lots of chameleons, frogs, snakes etc.

Haven’t gone through photos yet but will send you some images later (we have plenty of course).

Best wishes,

Lyn and Roger.