"Madagascar - Unknown Paradise" a Madagascar Travel Page by MikeAtSea

The largest of the Indian Ocean Islands, Madagascar offers the visitor a land rich in diversity, from the genteel, unique people with a rich cultural background, to its natural wonders and endemic plant and wildlife species.

Madagascar, the world's 4th largest Island, with a population of approximately 13 million inhabitants, is separated from southern Africa by the narrow Mozambique Channel. It contains a variety of climatic and floral zones varying from damp rain forests to semi-arid deserts. Madagascar has some 600000 hectares of mountainous, deeply ravined countryside. It has a variety of natural environments. The central highlands separate the drier west from the wet east, and the south is semi arid. The North- east has a classically tropical climate and is covered in rainforests, that advance into magnificent reefs.

Unlike other islands in the Indian Ocean it is not a developed 'holiday island', making it one of the great undeveloped and undiscovered adventure destinations in the world.

Madagascar started to move away from the the mainland of Africa about 200 million years ago and as it drifted away into the Indian Ocean it look a large number of animal and plant species. Thus the island became a veritable Noah's Ark, carrying an assortment of species into evolutionary exile.

About 2000 years ago, man arrived on the island, coming from Malaysia, Polynesia, India and more recently Africa, which then began to change the face of Madagascar as they settled, hunted and cleared the forests to farm rice and graze cattle.

It is the islands unique plants and animals, many of which are found nowhere else in the world, which is one of the largest attractions to island visitors.