If you follow National Geographic on Instagram (or some form of social media) or any general travel accounts, you are bound to have seen the infamous Avenue of Baobabs posted once or twice. I have seen the same couple of photos posted numerous times, as Madagascar isn’t a destination that many people I know, or follow on social media, have had the opportunity to travel to. The reason I chose it as our winter holiday destination stemmed from my boyfriend’s love of the book The Little Prince (Le Petit Prince). In that book, the baobabs represent the obstacles of life. Anyways, he loves them, so what better place to see them than the infamous avenue of baobabs.
I was prepared for them not to look quite as the photos I have seen show, as a photographer myself, I know that certain edits can be done to make places seem a certain way, when to other eyes it’s not all that similar. But I booked our trip anyways, centering our tour around the fact that we needed to get to the Avenue of Baobabs at some point.
Our second destination on our tour was Morondava, we had no expectations for the place other than being able to see the baobabs and it did not disappoint. Everything from the hotel, the food, the guides, and the locations explored, was incredible.
Accommodations
We stayed at the Palissandre Cote Ouest Resort (booked through our tour) and were pleasantly surprised with how amazing it was. We had a beach front bungalow, with incredible view of the ocean. The resort itself was also a spa, which I regret not taking part in a massage of some kind while staying there. The food (breakfast and dinner included in our stay) was unforgettable; I am a foodie and care about these things. Specifically our Christmas dinner was absolutely delicious; it may not have been the turkey dinner I am used to but chicken sure was nice. And then the picturesque swing on the beach to watch the sunset just made it even better.
Kirindy Forest Reserve
I am not going to lie, I really wanted to see a Fosa here. After reading how this is the most likely place to see them of where we were going, I got my hopes up. But apparently they make appearances more during the dry season than the wet. So I was let down. But the incredible lemur spotting more than made up for that. We saw both the sifaka and the brown lemurs, on a walk with our incredible guide Ludo. He was so entertaining, and pleasant to spend our day wandering around the forest and pointing out all the creatures we came across.
Avenue of Baobabs
So technically we were at the Avenue of Baobabs three times. First we stopped on our way to Kirindy Forest for our hike, since we had to drive through anyways. And we arrived again after our hike at around 3pm… and sunset was at 6:30pm, but there was not really enough time to go back to the hotel and drive back, but I really wanted to see the sunset. It was worth killing time for 3 hours, as the sunset did not disappoint. I could not have asked for a better Christmas Eve. And then we even came back the next morning for sunrise (5am sunrise, means waking up at 345am). Both equally worth it. I’ll let you judge for yourselves.
So basically, if you are going to Madagascar, yes Avenue of Baobabs is worth the trip to Morondava (we had to take two planes from Antananarivo to get there). But if you have more time than we did, I also suggest checking out Tsingy Bemaraha, as we were unable to get there due to time constraints and being there during “rainy season”.
i am not the word 
Leave a comment