After an extraordinarily long day driving from Nosy Be to Antsiranana, our trip started to hit a few road bumps. We arrived into Antsiranana (also known as Diego Suarez and commonly referred to simply as ‘Diego’) and were just hit with issue after issue.
Upon checking in to our hotel we were told that the booking hadn’t been paid for (which it absolutely had) but finding the evidence of this payment was borderline impossible because of how bad the wifi was. The staff were completely dismissive and disinterested and despite most of them speaking decent English (as we later discovered) they refused to do so, which made the whole situation even more frustrating.
We eventually got given room keys because as it turned out, yes, the payment had been made in full and of course upon getting to the room we discovered a delightful lack of hot water.
Oh, and that night I got bedbugs. The joys.
The next day I demanded that we change rooms and what should’ve been a quick, ‘oh my goodness, we are so sorry, let us change you to a new room’ was numerous hours of humbug and frankly, laziness and attitude from the staff.
Word to the wise, avoid Hotel de la Poste like the plague, because it is a seriously atrocious excuse for a hotel.
I was already starting to get the travel heebie jeebies and couldn’t shake the feeling that we would be better off flying back to the capital of Antananarivo early. It’s not that the shitty night in the hotel was so bad that we wanted to leave (although it definitely didn’t help matters) but I just felt like something was off. I have had these strong notions in the past and generally speaking, I have tended to be right on the money and thus I have learned not to ignore them, but I wasn’t quite ready to throw in the towel just yet.
After our less than delightful morning changing rooms and dealing with the bedbug infestation, we set off with our guide to visit a few of the beautiful beaches around Diego.
Our first stop of the day was Sakalava Bay, a beautiful beach of white sands and turquoise seas that is renowned for being a kite surfing hotspot – and it’s easy to see why! The winds were perfect, the waves delightful and watching both beginners and pros kitesurf was a delight.
We next headed to Ramena Bay for lunch which was a pretty lovely little stop. The beach is lined with restaurants, kids are swimming and playing on the sand and watching the boats come and go is the epitome of relaxing. Our driver recommended a little spot for lunch called Elody. I must admit, when I saw that there was not a single other person eating there I was mentally preparing for the food to be underwhelming at best, but as it turns out, you definitely shouldn’t judge a book by its cover!
The fresh fish we were served was nothing short of delightful and honestly, was quite likely one of the best meals we had had in our entire time in Madagascar. The coconut rice and fresh salsas were perfect accompaniments and the view, well it was perfect.
That evening we got back into phone service range and discovered that our domestic flight from Diego to Tana which was meant to leave at ~0800 (in two days time) had been pushed to close to 1600 that day. I looked up the flight schedule and it was quickly obvious that if that flight were cancelled or further delayed we would miss our flight to Joburg and likely our onwards connections. I have already discussed the reliability (or lack thereof) of Air Maybe – oh sorry! – Air Madagascar and thus the bad juju vibes that I had already been aware of went into overdrive.
We were meant to spend the following day going to Amber Mountain National Park but I just didn’t think we could take the risk and thus I was quickly on the phone waking up my angel of a wife back home in Australia to ask her to book us flights out the next morning.
After about an hour of scrambling around, we had our flights booked and packed our bags with a new plan to fly back to Tana the next morning.
Our flight went without a hitch and we opted to spend our next few nights just relaxing at the nicest hotel in Tana – The Radisson Blu Waterfront.
The rooftop bar and pool are huge wins for this hotel and amazingly, neither were ever super busy so we could simply enjoy them at our leisure. We spent the days swimming, eating and I also jammed in a few hours of solid photo editing time.
As we were leaving Tana to head to Joburg after our relaxing few days we heard about sudden flight disruptions affecting domestic flights within Madagascar. Apparently two of the three planes that service the domestic routes both were grounded in separate incidents which was creating chaos across the country! We heard of people paying tens of thousands of dollars to charter flights to get them to where they needed to go… I am certainly glad we got back to the capital when we did!
Stay tuned for the most incredible layover in Johannesburg that you could ever imagine!
The Three Bays: The three bays is one of the more popular day trips to be done from Diego Suarez, there are some truly beautiful beaches on offer and I highly recommend a meal at Elody on Ramena Beach!
Hotel de la Poste: Avoid this hotel like the plague that it will put on you. I stayed at Hotel Victoria on my last visit in 2019 and found it to be much better
Radisson Blu Waterfront Tana: This is easily the nicest hotel in Tana and as an added bonus is quite reasonably priced. Make sure not to skip the rooftop pool!
Remember: Air Madagascar is infamous for its lack of reliability, I highly recommend padding your trip with some buffer days to mitigate risks, alternatively, flying directly in and out of Nosy Be with Airlink is a fantastic and exceptionally reliable option
