Setting the Scene
Let’s be clear about why you’re here. It isn’t the thread count. It’s the rainforest just over the railing, and the indri living in it. Mantadia Lodge sits on a hillside looking over the thick, misty montane forest of Andasibe-Mantadia National Park. It’s a modern, comfortable and entirely sensible base for one of the most eyebrow-raising rainforests in Madagascar. The Indiris start singing their whale song through the canopies around sunrise; try sharpen your ears to hear them – this is the sound you’ll be following on treks through the park. When your legs have had enough, there’s a rather excellent infinity pool and a Herbal Spa waiting to put them back together.
Nesting arrangements
The 23 rooms are smart and pared back: wooden floors, wooden furniture, nothing fussy. Four of them are family suites with connecting rooms, for anyone bringing a small troop of their own. There’s AC for the sticky days and a wood-burning stove for the chilly nights, because the rainforest can do both. Every room has a terrace looking straight into the green. Your first coffee belongs out there, with the forest wrapped in mist below you.
Food philosophy
The restaurant is open-plan, with a lounge full of comfy seats and a terrace looking across the valley. That terrace is where you watch the sun come up, and later where you watch it go down, gingery rum cocktail in hand. We consider the cocktail compulsory.
Breakfast is a buffet, so you can load up before the trails. Lunch is either at the restaurant or packed up to come with you into the forest. At dinner you’ll find hearty, honest Malagasy-leaning dishes like chicken in coconut sauce and zébu fillet with pepper sauce, along with soups and salads. (Zébu is Madagascar’s hump-backed cow, and you’ll see plenty of them on the drive in.) It’s good, filling food for people who’ve spent the day walking uphill.
Secret sauce
It’s all about location. The lodge is right on the doorstep of Andasibe-Mantadia National Park, which is probably the best rainforest experience in Madagascar.
This is indri country. A few families have been habituated, so you can get properly close to them in the wild. You’ll also have a good chance of spotting their neighbours, like woolly lemurs and grey bamboo lemurs. Then there are the chameleons, the forest’s hide-and-seek champions. Keep your eyes peeled, or do what everyone does and rely on your guide, who can spot a thumbnail-sized chameleon from 20 paces.
Between sightings, you can hike the montane forest, go birding, cycle the nature trails or swim under waterfalls. After dark, pull on a head torch and go looking for the things that only come out once everything else has gone to bed.
One more thing…
The pool is the lodge’s ace card. It’s a big hillside infinity pool overlooking the Andasibe forest and a patchwork of rice fields. Do a few virtuous lengths, then collapse onto a sunbed and let the day’s hike melt off of you. You’ve earned it.
