The Vezo Boat-Builders and Their Pirogues
For the Vezo of southwest Madagascar, the outrigger pirogue carved from a single tree is tool, transport and tent. Meet the sea people whose whole life sails in a lakana.
Category: Insider Madagascar
Andringitra: the One Place It Snows in Madagascar
High in the granite massif of Andringitra, tropical Madagascar freezes — frost, bitter wind and rare snow around Pic Boby (2,658 m), the island’s highest climbable peak.
The Taboo Lemurs Communities Refuse to Harm
The indri — babakoto, ‘father of man’ — is fady to harm because many Malagasy believe it carries ancestral spirits. How a taboo quietly protects Madagascar’s sacred lemurs.
Fort Dauphin: France’s First, Doomed Colony in Madagascar
In 1643 France built Fort-Dauphin, its first colony in Madagascar — doomed by disease and isolation, ended by massacre in 1674, but immortalised by Flacourt’s famous history.
Libertalia — Myth or Madagascar’s Lost Pirate Utopia?
Legend tells of Libertalia, a free pirate republic on Madagascar with its own constitution. Historians call it a hoax — but the real pirate havens behind the myth were no fiction.
The Spiny Desert and the Octopus Trees
Madagascar’s spiny forest is a thorny desert of cactus-like octopus trees found nowhere else — 95% endemic plants, a botanical masterpiece of surviving on almost no rain.
The Legend of the Baobab, the Tree Planted Upside Down
Legend says the gods planted the baobab upside down for its pride. The truth is a water-storing giant — and 6 of the world’s 8 baobab species are Malagasy, not African.
Tsingy: How Madagascar Grew a Forest of Stone
The Tsingy is a forest of razor-sharp limestone spires — an ancient seabed uplifted and carved by rain into a stone maze ‘where one cannot walk barefoot.’