We discovered it takes a long time to get to Madagascar from Denver! Even though it actually only took us 3 flights, we left on Monday afternoon and with the time change of 9 hours, we finally arrived on the island of Nosy Be on Wednesday around the same time. In order to take one of the best most straightforward flights, we first flew to Washington DC and stayed overnight in the airport hotel. The next morning was our long flight on Ethiopian Airlines, which was a new one for us. They have one of their newer planes flying the route from DC to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, which takes roughly 13 hours. We found Ethiopian Airlines to be pleasant with tasty food and great service. They were advertising Ethiopia as a new destination in Africa and all of the images had us bumping it up on our list of places we want to travel.

We didn't have our boarding pass for Madagascar, as we had booked it under a separate ticket, but we were able to show our ticket on email and make it to the transit desk without having to pass through immigration, which was a huge bonus. Keep in mind, you wouldn't be able to do this if you were checking bags, which is one of the reasons we prefer not to, as we purchase separate tickets quite often! A few hours waiting in the Ethiopian lounge and we were on our way to Nosy Be, also on Ethipian Airlines. Each of our 3 flights ended up being about an hour delayed, but luckily we had plenty of time in between.

After 4 more hours of flying, we landed at the tiny airport on Nosy Be island. We purchased our visas on arrival for 35 EUR per person, a super quick process and they even took credit cards. One interesting thing that happened to us is that after placing the visa sticker in our passport and stamping it, the immigration officer asked us for a tip. It felt really inappropriate, but we gave him a 10 EUR bill and moved on. We were able to take out 800,000 Ariary each (about $185) of local cash at the ATM outside the airport where there was a security guard standing by who also asked us for a tip! We gave him a 2 Euro coin. A very interesting start to our time in Madagascar.

The island of Nosy Be is a popular destination amongst Europeans with direct flights from Italy and now Poland a few times per week. We found this out later after running into a lot of Italian tourists. As French is one of the official languages of Madagascar, you will also find a lot of French tourists. The islands are on the Northern side of Madagascar and we got the feeling that a lot of people come only here without plans to see much of the mainland, as it takes too long to get around. Due to a flight change to 1 day earlier on our next leg of the trip, we only had 3 nights in this area. One quick night in Nosy Be, another 1 night stay on the much smaller Nosy Iranja, followed by another night on Nosy Be. You could definitely spend more time in this area as we had originally planned.

Nosy Be

Nosy Be is Madagascar's largest and most popular tourist island. It hosts a small international airport and has a bustling oceanfront town called Hell-Ville, which was interesting enough that we had to look up its origins. Apparently, it was named after a French admiral with the name Anne Chrétien Louis de Hell. We didn't get to spend as much time as originally planned on Nosy Be, but if you have the opportunity to come here, there is a lot to do. Not only can you take the trip out to Nosy Iranja like we did, but there are several other nearby islands to explore. The islands nearby host a lemur reserve, snorkeling with sea turtles, or you can visit a ylang-ylang or vanilla plantation to see how the perfumes are made. We could see how people can easily spend a week here.

Despite all of the touristy excursions here, you are regularly reminded that this is still Africa. Along the roadside, you will find women carrying loads on the head, carts driven by the local zebu (a cattle with large hump), tuk tuks as a primary mode of transportation, and children selling bracelets and other goods on the beach. There are reminders all around that Madagascar is still a very poor country.

The views of the sea from Nosy Be are spectacular and both of the small hotels that we stayed in were extremely warm and welcoming. On our first night there, we stayed at the Panorama Villa hotel and enjoyed their spacious rooms, sparkling clean pool and sweeping views. After returning from Nosy Iranja, we stayed another night at the Maison Le Reve. The rooms seemed brand new and the hosts made our stay special with their kindness. It felt like we were part of their family! Both hotels were located about a 15 minute drive North from the hustle of Hell-Ville which made for a quieter and more peacful stay.

Nosy Iranja

We found paradise! Nosy Iranja is a small island gem that most people only visit for a quick day trip. Instead, we had arranged to stay on the island for the night in a small bunglow on the beach at Hotel Chez Olivia. We had a guide who picked us up from our hotel and brought us to the boat where we basically joined a day tour but we were the only ones who showed up with our luggage. The ride on the speedboat was just over an hour long and bumpy. Nosy Iranja is known for its 1km long sand bar that is exposed between 2 small islands, depending on the tide. When we arrived, it was low tide and you could walk out into the white sandy bottom for what seemed like forever.

Only 2 hours later, parts of the sandbar were already disappearing! Our time on the island included all meals, drinks, the boat round trip, the guide, and our stay in the bungalow. The cost was 120 Eur per person. For lunch, we ate with the group, and it was the biggest feast! We had potato salad, rice, fresh crabs, shrimp, whole prawns and steak bites, and an enormous fresh fish, followed by fruit. It was by far superior to any other tour lunch we'd ever had. After lunch, our guide walked us through the local town and over to the bungalows set on their own white sand beach. We couldn't get over how beautiful it was. Our bungalow was a simple A-frame with bed, shared toilets, and a curtain for a door, but it was lovely and had a nice breeze the entire time. We had snacks and beer while watching the sunset back on the sandbar, which was almost gone due to high tide. It was cool to see the waves crashing in from both sides. Dinner was pasta, chicken skewers and cucumber salad back at the bungalows.

The next morning we ate breakfast quickly, packed up and walked over to see the sandbar, as we had not seen it at the premium tide yesterday. We were able to walk on the sandbar just as it was emerging from both sides of the waves and we were the first ones there, exactly as we had hoped! After walking all the way across and back, we explored another hidden beach and did some snorkeling before having another full lunch and ride back on the boat at 2:30pm. We wished we could have stayed for another night on this beautiful island!