In 1975 I attended a slide show in Cape Town given by a zoo collector who had just returned from a country called Madagascar. By the end of the evening I knew Ihad to go there. It wasn’t just the lemurs, it was the utter otherness of this little-known island that entranced me. So I went, and I fell in love, and I’ve been returning ever since.
Madagascar has brought me the best of times and the worst of times. I have exalted at the discovery of some of the strangest creatures in the world, laughed at the dancing sifakas and gushed over baby lemurs; I have snorkelled over multicoloured coral and watched a lobster make its cautious way over the seabed;
I have made the only footprints on a deserted beach overhung with coconut palms and swum in the sand-warmed sea in the moonlight. I have also endured the misery of 14-hour taxi-brousse journeys, the exhausting heat of the lowlands and the unexpectedly cold nights in the highlands. And I have been lost in the rainforest for four days and eaten roasted insects. I have also been robbed several times. Yet all I remember are the good times. Even the insects – treehoppers belonging to the Fulgoridae family if you must know – were tasty! A few years ago someone wrote to me: ‘I went for the lemurs, but in the end it’s the people I’ll remember.’ Me too. This is one of the poorest countries in the world, yet the overriding impression is of joy and laughter.
I can hardly remember a time when I wasn’t writing this biennial guide. Although the first edition was published in 1988, it was preceded in 1984 by a stapled booklet, A Glance at Madagascar, written for the handful of tour operators daring to send visitors to this woefully haphazard country, then the No Frills Guide to Madagascar in 1986. It’s a bit like my compost bin: layer is added to layer, the original material gets compressed but its goodness remains, and new matter is incorporated. The end product is, I hope, enriching, but it is never finished. There’s always more to add.
