Madagascar cultural tours

Madagascar is an exotic island, with a mixed cultural heritage and thousands of endemic plants and wildlife, including more than 90 species of lemurs and 300 species of birds, nearly 100 are endemic to Madagascar. Visiting National parks, special reserves leads to our rich natural heritage. See Madagascar through the eyes of Malagasy people, as your tour manager gives you insight into our rich and colourful country. Of the money collected through entrance fees for National Park's, 50% goes to fund the parks, and 50% is used for development projects in local communities surrounding the parks. This means that there is a strong relationship between the money brought in by tourists and the protection of biodiversity.

We stay in small locally-run hotels and lodges and eat in local restaurants. Some of the hotels we use have solar energy, however, infrastructure is limited mainly we have no choice. The tour managers have a set of environmental guidelines that they work with and will share this information with you during your trip. We support understanding, appreciation and conservation of the cultures and environments we visit. We run our tours in a socially and environmentally responsible way. Adopting a 'carry in – carry out – leaving nothing than your footprints' idea, we actively engage in environmentally responsible practices to minimise impact upon the habitat. We make sure that where and whenever possible our tours positively benefit the local community.

We prepare for each traveller a booklet with information about the tour and Madagascar and there is information about. On our tours the guide makes sure that we leave no waste and that we recycle. We run a lot of tours to rural regions. Especially there, but not only, travellers are encouraged to follow the example of the tour manager.

In Madagascar, it seems to be there is no time. It is a great country with friendly and patient people. We can learn about each other's cultures and countries. We will give you a sense of Malagasy culture and way of life. It is the interest as visitor to have a contact with the people. Wherever possible we buy local produce on trips. There are only some cans where local production does not exist. We limit the group size on this tour to 12 to assist in reducing both the potential negative cultural and environmental impact of our tour.

Our Malagasy tour managers mostly have 3-years experience in tourism and are all trained by us in the importance of responsible tourism as well as first aid and other matters. Our Malagasy team of men and women are passionate about our country's history, heritage and natural beauty and will make you see our country through the eyes of a Malagasy. This makes the difference. We run as paperless an office as possible except flight tickets, vouchers and itineraries for the guides.

We support Ny Hary – Antseranantsoa project in Mianiarivo. We have visited this project for 3 years with our tourists. Since early 2008 we donate €100 per tourist we visit the project with. For some months we have visited regulary with our passengers, another NGO in Ambositra. However we are still in an phase of observation at the moment. Madagascar is still a poor country in the world. We live here, we work here and the benefits we generate are spent in Madagascar. Our staffs has Malagasy Nationality, the foreigners working with us are living here as well the whole year. In this way we contribute directly to the development. We want to make our tours a positive force.