About Kayaking in Madagascar with MadagaSCaT
KayakinMadagascar is a subsidiary of MadagasCaT Charters and Travel and forms the first part of their new venture:
MadagaSCaT Sport, Charters and Travel.
Extensive research, expert knowledge and professional advice have all formed the basis of KayakinMadagascar.
The mantra of MadagasCaT is to have personally experienced the places they send clients to. It is for this reason that you, the traveller, can be sure that your journey will be as smooth as Madagascar allows with the ‘bumpy bits’ ironed out before you even notice them.
Owner managed with a 24 hour hands on policy you are just a phone call away from help or advice. No fixed office hours mean you can call if you are stranded when your flight is delayed or your connections don’t work.
MadagasCat and KayakinMadagascar do not sell products – they sell experiences.
They are exceptionally excited and proud to be able to offer these new adventures to you – the adventurous traveller.
The Equipment
All the kayaks used in these tours are sit on top double kayaks, either C Kayaks or PaddleYak. Life jackets, paddles and the kayaks are all provided. In each tour there are guides included and back up boats carrying equipment and gear.
From a personal experience these kayaks are easy to manoeuvre, manage and balance on. It is also easy to ‘hop on and hop off’ to take a quick swim or explore an interesting piece of coral with your goggles. They are not heavy and therefore easy to pull up and down beaches.
The Guides
In the case of the Masoala and the dhow-supported Nosy Be tours the guides are local Malagasy people speaking good English and with expert local knowledge. The Nosy Be Catamaran based tour will use the skipper of the boat as your guide. In this case it is a South African who has lived in Madagascar for ten years. He speaks Malagasy and knows the waters and islands on this itinerary well.
About Madagascar
The result of a complex recipe prepared over millions of years.
Not for the faint hearted traveller, Madagascar has yet to develop as a world class tourist destination. But that is the attraction of this vast and diverse island.
Travelling There: Remember, Madagascar is not Mauritius; nor is it the Med. There are no hotel groups, no rows of deck chairs, no bossy guides with umbrellas. It is full of surprises. It is not for the soft tourist; you need a sense of adventure and the ability to wonder at what you are experiencing without comparing it to anywhere else you have been. No preconceived ideas or expectations....you need to let Madagascar happen to you. If you are still interested then we invite you to read further....
Geographical history: A long, long time ago there was a massive continent named Godwana. Over 65 million years ago this continent broke up to form (roughly speaking) Africa, Australia, South America and - broken off in the move - Madagascar. Somehow evolution sort of stopped on the 587,000 km2 island continent. Animals and plants that hitched a ride evolved separately to their cousins that they left behind. They did not have the competition of better developed species and thus, the majority of the life here is endemic meaning not found anywhere else in the world.
The island first saw human beings only 2000 years ago so the flora and fauna has evolved without any human intervention. It is a sad, and hardly coincidental, fact that in the last two millennia Madagascar has seen more extinction than at any other time in her natural history. Very little is known about the origin of the Malagasy people but it is thought they are a mix of Indonesian and African with later migrations from East Africa and Southern India resulting in a mostly Indonesian language lightly peppered with Kiswahili.
For more information refer to Hilary Bradt’s Guide to Madagascar.
