Madagascar, the world's fourth-largest island, is full of oddities and rarities. If you're partial to lizards, for example, you're in luck: You'll find more than half the world's species of chameleons there. You'll also find more than some 70 species of lemur, a family of wide-eyed, long-tailed primates that are exclusive to this one island. Madagascar's biodiversity also embraces some 220 endemic frog species, while more than half of the 210 breeding birds occur nowhere else in the world. And every year scientists discover new species of plants and animals in its deserts and forests.
But if Madagascar is a nature lover's dream, it can also be a traveler's nightmare. It's one of the poorest countries in the world—three-quarters of its 25.6 million people live on less than US$2 a day. Though warm, wet and fertile, the island produces barely enough to feed itself—one in 10 children there is chronically malnourished and it is one of the African countries most severely affected by climate change.
Politically, the situation in the country has improved since 2001, when a disputed election threw Madagascar into chaos. President Marc Ravalomanana opened up the country to foreign investment and tried to stamp out corruption and bad governance after years of mismanagement. The 2005 animated film Madagascar generated a lot of worldwide interest in this country off Africa's southeastern coast.
So there is hope for Madagascar, especially in the area of ecotourism. It has an exceptional variety of landscapes, from coral isles and virgin coastlines to baobab forests and craters. All of Africa has one variety of baobab tree, for example, and Madagascar has seven, as well as 19,000 species of plants—a world record.
However, Madagascar continues to face ongoing problems—regular flooding and cyclones (in 2004 and 2008, cyclones destroyed an estimated 300,000 structures, left 600,000 people homeless, and killed and injured scores more) and drought conditions in some areas.
The country is also constrained by lack of infrastructure (there are only about 3,700 mi/6,000 km of constructed roads in a country the size of France) and good hotels. So although tourists are heading there in ever-increasing numbers, Madagascar still has a long way to go before it ranks as a top tourist destination.
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