Visit Île Sainte-Marie - Madagascar

Ile Sainte-Marie is a sleepy island off Madagascar’s east coast, ringed by deserted beaches with soft sand and palm trees, traditional fishing villages and just a handful of small lodges.

The island is renowned for its seafood and is the best place on Madagascar to eat crab. If you are brave you can also sample the island tipple – coconut milk enlivened by a large measure of Pastis.

Historic Ile Sainte Marie

Ile Sainte Marie is about 60 kilometres long and 5 kilometres wide and has a colourful history: through the 17th and 18th centuries it was a popular base for the Indian Ocean’s pirates. There is one town, Ambodifotatra, with a couple of cafés, a large church and a busy market. Numerous villages dotted around the island have bamboo huts, fat ducks crossing the road and geese swimming in rainfilled potholes. Mango, clove, cinammon and breadfruit trees line the roads that never get far from beaches where pirogues are moored in the shallows. If you cycle through the villages in the evening you smell the food being cooked, hear music playing from the radios and under a tree in Volihava village there is often a group of men playing boules.

Whale watching

Ile Sainte Marie can be visited from April right through until December, but is particularly rewarding from July to September when substantial groups of humpback whales come to breed and calve in the calm waters of the Antongil Bay. The cloves are harvested in November and the mangos and lychees come into season in December: only the months of January to March are marred by the cyclone season.

With all these enticing features just a short flight from Tana it is surprising this island has remained so thoroughly unspoiled.

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• Alexandra
• Africa Safari Specialist
• Read more about Alexandra