Day 10 – 17.10.2026 – Salt fields and Manja
After Belo we left for Manja, from where on we’d head to Ifaty and Isalo. We passed by a salt production “field” or factory or whatever where they dry the sea water for salt, scrape off the salt into piles, fill in the 50kg bags mentioned earlier and sew them with a hand-held sewing machine which is basically the only automated part of the process. They then send the bags elsewhere where iodine will be added and then they will be ready for shipping. Not going back to the unfair amounts they get here… But there were lots of kiddos again and two took my hands and walked with me everywhere – Sandra and Marlene (I think) and they were so cute. They were sort of fighting with the other kids over who would hold my hands, so they were always waiting if I took a photo and then, when I was ready, grabbing my hand again immediately. 😀 (insert photo with the girls) [Add the intended photo or remove this placeholder.]. At the end I decided to give them some chips and there were so many kids that I had to basically get a pinch of the doritos and give to every kid.
Some would ask twice (I could see their orange hands), such tiny little hands though. I feel so bad for these kids, want to adopt them all. At the same time the adults who want to sell stuff are so annoying. I understand they are trying to make a living and I do buy a lot, but I cannot buy from everyone. I’m not that rich sadly. But they won’t let you, they chase you everywhere. Quite annoying actually. No matter how many times you say no, they keep following and insisting. But anyway. We headed to Manja after the salt fields and when we arrived, it was a bit shocking. At Manja, we had the most primitive room and accommodation in general, and restaurant too. It was like the Dutch rijtjeshuis, but inside there were 3 beds, all sunken. At least they had mosquito nets, that was good. We had electricity only 2–3h in the evening, so we plugged in everything to charge. There was a sort of a wall inside the room (not to the ceiling), with a curtain separating you from the toilet where all the sounds and you know… other things freely travel from the bathroom to the room.
Oh, and a giant brown cockroach too (we managed to get that one out luckily). Thank God Toos (my roommate) is not afraid of them as much as I am. We would later have dinner at a restaurant 5 min walk from our hotel, where we sat at the back in a garden. So we took a walk around the village and it was a small village with 3 streets with a market and apparently a back side with a meat market. I’m glad we didn’t find it as there was a half cut zebu head there 🙁 I saw a photo on WhatsApp and it was pretty gruesome. I will keep it in the photo folders but not for the travel diary of the blog. What shocked me again is how they treat animals, literally holding 5 chickens by the legs, head down bringing them to slaughter at the restaurant, a duck in a tiny cage along with 2-3 more chickens at like half a meter space for all.
Horrible. While I know for hungry people this is only food, they ARE living beings after all, at least don’t treat them that badly while alive. Saw some kids beating the hell out of the zebus to push them to walk further when they were tired or just walking on the field or somewhere along the road even without the cart attached. Not cool, these kids grow up cruel just like their parents. I hope they learn better eventually. I guess when I eat chicken, I try to mentally detach myself and think that at least in Madagascar, the chickens roam free until their time comes, so they are in a way happier than the ones in Europe and definitely than the mass-farmed ones in the USA. But it was still horrible to see.
So in the evening, after we were back from our village walk, because I had been missing my luggage for a week, I was a bit paranoid about my mosquito bites. Yes, of course, not all mosquitoes carry malaria, but knowing that they may, does something to my brain and I guess on this trip I kinda figured that I can be a bit of a hypochondriac and “invent” symptoms by being worried about something and then every little thing you feel, you think is a symptom, that you would otherwise ignore as a tiny 2-second random pain or whatever it is. But given the fact I am in a country with very poor healthcare and days away from any option to be treated if anything happens, I wanted to know for sure. For me, asking for this meant the rest of our group would know and it would be embarrassing so I really didn’t want to do it, but at 6 PM when normally places should close, I asked Fina to come with me to the local clinic for a malaria test, because when we walked to the village of Manja earlier in the day, I saw that the medical center was literally next to our hotel. I wouldn’t say this clinic was the best thing to experience, it was quite empty and very, very old and, honestly, dirty. But I had anticipated something like that and washed my hands well with soap beforehand to keep them clean for the blood draw from my finger. After we walked around and Fina asked for someone who could do the test, a man arrived and he was idk, anxious or something. But he was very much rushing and his hands were trembling a bit and when he poked my finger, there’s a tool you need to use to collect the blood with, it was still in the bag of the kit and he was harshly trying to shake it out of the bag, so it fell on the dirty table etc… He only took a teeny, tiny bit of blood, and I didn’t feel like that was enough. The disinfectant wipe in the kit was used before the poking so my finger was clean, but the tool after made it dirty again… But anyway, the person explained that the test shows the result immediately, within 2–3 min. It showed negative. That gave me some peace of mind… for now.
Day 11 – 18.10.2026 – Ifaty and Reniala (Spiny) Forest
From Manja, we left for Ifaty. We had to cross a river by boat and this is where we parted ways with our 4×4 drivers. Car number 2 with our driver Nirina had to leave us there. We gave him 70k per person on the last day, which was about a euro per day for 7 days. I had given him also one day 40, one day 30, 2 days 20 etc, so he was very nice to me 😀 so we parted ways and our luggage was loaded on the canoe boats which were basically two canoes with wood in between them where you can sit. We were on another boat and our luggage was loaded on two separate boats. So when our luggage arrived, it was then loaded on two zebu carts. As for us we were walking behind them it was very hot and the river was very very wide but only the first part of water was deep after that there was sand and then there was a bit more water but it was not deep, maybe up to the knee or even less so the zebu carts passed through the water with our luggage and we were walking behind and then upwards onto the bus. After that, we were on the bus until we reached Ifaty. There we had 2 days.
On the first day we went to the Reniala forest (Reni means mother and ala means forest), this is how they call the baobabs – mother of the forest. The species of baobab there is a red-barked baobab which looks like a bottle. So many cool shapes of trees, the same tree. And there was one more tree that also looks like a baobab but is grey and hollow – they call it Chinese (fake) baobab from which they make the canoe base and also there’s a “music” tree which also looks like a baobab. I guess they all look at each other and want to look like each other so they grow in a similar way. But they make a musical instrument from the wood of the music tree and sort of a drumstick or whatever from the fruit of that same tree.
They also call the forest the Spiny Forest. Basically everything there is forced to store water due to drought and to grow sharp spikes for protection. The Reniala forest is a protected private reserve, mostly from local people. It is surrounded by a tall 3-4m electric fence to prevent locals from going there and cutting trees or anything else they may do. Apparently back in the day people also ate lemurs, so they would kill the mother for food and keep her baby as a pet. The Reniala forest now also focuses on returning these baby lemurs (now adults) back to their natural habitat, so the forest serves as a re-adaptation location and there are giant cages where they keep some of the lemurs to adapt to their natural environment safely, before letting them out for “soft release” in the forest of Reniala and finally to their natural habitat.
There are also some groups of lemurs (maki, or ring-tail lemurs) roaming around the forest. The forest was established as a private reserve only 20y ago, so not that long ago. We saw a red fody bird (a pretty red bird that I saw on Merlin but didn’t dare hope to see), but there it was, in front of our group! Got some cool photos. Also at the hotel parking I saw another nightjar! Sooo cool, got the perfect photos after accidentally scaring it away (didn’t see it, meaning camouflage works) and it went to perch on a tree. I told no one as I didn’t want people to scare it away.
Day 12 – 19.10.2026 – Snorkeling and Birding @ Ifaty
I had booked an early morning birdwatching trip with the same company as for snorkeling. Birdwatching started at 5:30 and snorkeling at 8. So not much time but it was still soooo worth it. They picked me up by… wait for it… a zebu cart 😀 So one guide with me and the driver. And inside the park was another man who lives nearby and knows the place very well. It looks like the same forest as Reniala (spiny forest) but was called Musa and it is literally across the street from our Bamboo Hotel. Let’s call the third guy the Spotter. So the spotter knew where to find the ground roller, the bird they call “the president of the birds” and everyone wanted to see it.
And he did not disappoint! We found it and after a bit of running around the bushes, it was there, proudly standing still, waiting for me to photograph it <3. And I told them I want to see the hawk and the guy knew exactly where to find it and where the nest was and it was suuuch a gorgeous raptor, it was calling for another bird or its mate, I suppose. Amazing sighting! We kept looking around and saw the red fody again but apparently the day before we had seen a female, as she was not completely red but rather spotted. And now we saw the male proudly sitting on top of a spiky octopus tree (used for the seats of the canoe and for fences around gardens), there right on top, singing.
Such a little bird that pops out. We also spotted a supposed-to-be-sleeping-during-the-day small lemur, endemic to this forest, Petter’s sportive lemur. And last, but totally not least, the guy knew where to find a scops owl and I diiied seeing it, it was sooo awesome. And we were in a rush otherwise I’d have stayed much longer to make a video and more photos but we had to run since it was only 15min to 8 AM and we had no time to get back. So we rushed back to the “cart”, the two cow-power car, to be precise and they made a video of me “driving” the cart 😀 And we were right in time at 8 AM back to the parking lot.
I only went to get my pareo and remove the shoes and pants and right back for the canoe. It took maybe an hour to get to the reef and the guys in the canoe were rowing like crazy. At some point I thought one of the boys, a skinny boy, would faint any moment and wanted to tell him to take it easy but I knew that wouldn’t have been received well by the other 2 Dutchies in my group, so I didn’t and hoped he’d take a bit of rest himself. But when we jumped into the water IT WAS AMAZING! I am sooo angry at myself for not taking my Insta360 for this, grrrrrrr! The corals looked like roses! Sooo beautiful! And the fish were all shapes and colours, I saw a pufferfish and one of these long pointy fish as well, and some beautiful iridescent fish and one dark-blue fish with a pointy face.
But the cherry on the cake was when I was wandering a bit further from the reef, around the edge and saw… a CORAL FARM! OMG! I screamed from excitement but ofc only I heard that. I have previously donated to one of these initiatives and it was soooo amazing to see this with my own eyes! It looked like poles and in between them sort of ropes where the corals were planted, and this was going on for a loong distance underwater, rather deep, maybe 4-5m deep, I only observed and tried to swim over along the farm to see how long it was but quickly gave up, it was too long. Super cool initiative. I later read more about it and it seems this project started 13 months ago, so quite recently and they had an 85% survival rate so far, so this is amazing! See this Instagram video and follow their page! I will definitely keep track of the coral reef nursery project at Ifaty.
Overall this was an amazing day and I had free time to wander around the hotel, some people went to the village; I stayed and wrote some of this blog for a few hours. So a great day!