Madagascar Self Drive Adventure a World First

In October and November 2017 Self Drive Adventures ran the world first commercial tagalong self drive adventure in Madagascar. It was epic! Madagascar is so much more than lemurs and chameleons. 160 million years ago Madagascar split from the African continent to form the fourth largest island in the world. At that time mammals did not even exist (they appeared around 100 million years later), which is why Madagascar is without the typical fauna found on the African continent. Other than bats, that were able to fly from the continent, there is not a single Madagascan mammal species that you can find in any other place of the world. Madagascar is one of the most bio-diverse countries on earth, home to thousands of species of plant and animal life of which about 80 percent cannot be found anywhere else on the planet. Even 65 percent of all bird species are endemic to Madagascar. The local ethnic group that forms almost all of the 22 million population are the Malagasy. They only arrived here from Indonesia around 2,000 years ago and now there are 18 tribes of them across the country. The history of has many influences from Arab merchants, Portuguese, French, Dutch and English. As we discovered Madagascar is a perfect self drive adventure destination. We believe we were the first commercial convoy adventure ever to take place here – most of the 4x4 driving done is with a local driver, doing it yourself is almost unheard of. We experienced some interesting but fun ferry crossings, a good bit of sand and dirt as well as tar driving, some on good roads, but many with excellent and large pot holes.