Beaches in Madagascar
2 beaches · 2 beach worlds
The world's fourth largest island, with a reef-fringed west coast that is dry and an eastern one that faces the open Indian Ocean and takes the cyclones. Almost all beach travel happens in the north-west, around Nosy Be and its satellite islands, where the water is calm inside the reef and tidal sandbars surface at low water; Nosy Iranja and Nosy Tanikely are the day trips, the second a marine reserve. The south-west around Ifaty and Anakao has the longest reef in the country and a Vezo fishing culture working from sail pirogues. The island's biodiversity is the reason most visitors come at all — around ninety per cent of its wildlife exists nowhere else — and the lemurs, baobabs and spiny forest are usually the trip, with the beach at the end of it. Whale sharks gather off Nosy Be between September and December, and humpbacks pass Sainte-Marie on the east coast from July to September. Practically: infrastructure is thin, roads are poor enough that distances mean little, and internal flights are the practical way to move and are frequently rescheduled. The dry season runs April to November and cyclone season January to March. Malaria is present throughout the coastal lowlands.
The two are different kinds of shore. The sand is coral sand throughout, and both sit on water a reef protects. Together they account for 3 km of shore. · computed from the 2 records below
