In October 2019, I visited the fourth largest island in the world, Madagascar (Greenland, New Guinea and Borneo are the three largest in that order). Even though Madagascar is part of Africa, it is different from the rest of the continent in many ways. The explanation lies millions of years ago.
The island of Madagascar sits off by itself in the Indian Ocean, like the final piece of a jigsaw puzzle of Africa, waiting to be snapped into place on the continent’s lower right hand side. Way back in the mists of time, when the continents were drifting apart from each other like grown children moving away from home, Madagascar was tucked in between Africa and India when that huge land mass was called Gondwana.
When Gondwana broke up about 135 million years ago, the Africa-South America landmass drifted off in one direction, while the Madagascar-Antarctica-India landmass went the other way. About 88 million years ago, Madagascar split from India, leaving Madagascar on its own to evolve its numerous and fascinating endemic plant and animal species. (I hope you geologists out there will correct me if I have misunderstood something here.)
These many amazing species are a strong draw for tourists like me, who want to see lemurs, and species of chameleons, frogs, baobobs and other living creatures that are found nowhere else in the world. I want to see these endemic species before they disappear forever due to massive deforestation. And I want to meet the interesting folks who people this island – they have pretty special origins, too.
I hope you will follow me as I travel from the fertile slopes, lush rainforests and soothing coastlines of the east past mountains and terraced farmers’ fields to the arid and rocky southwest.
