The Avenue of the Baobabs

The Avenue of the Baobabs is a stretch of red dirt road fifteen kilometres out of Morondava, on Madagascar's west coast, where some twenty-five Adansonia grandidieri — the grandest of the island's baobabs, thirty metres tall and eight hundred years old, trunks like columns and branches like roots held to the sky — stand in a line on both sides of the RN8 above rice paddies and a pond, and where, every evening, the whole world with a camera comes to watch the sun go down between them. They are the survivors of a forest that was cleared for the fields, kept because the Sakalava hold them sacred; the island declared them its first natural monument in 2007. Seven kilometres on, the Baobabs Amoureux twist round each other; sixty kilometres on, the Kirindy forest keeps the fossa, the sifaka and the smallest lemur on Earth for those who walk it at night; and two hundred kilometres north, over a road that takes a day in a 4×4, the Tsingy de Bemaraha stands in its stone needles. Morondava itself is a warm, slow town on a peninsula, with the Vezo fishermen's outrigger canoes on the beach, an airport an hour from the capital, and the road east — the RN35, seven hundred kilometres and twelve hours — for those who come by land.

The traveller flies to Morondava, or arrives dusty from the RN35 or the Tsingy, sleeps at Nosy Kely on the beach, and goes to the avenue twice: at sunset with everyone — the zebu carts passing, the children selling, the light going copper on the trunks — and at dawn with no one, when the mist is on the paddies and the trees are black against a pale sky; walks the road on foot to the pond for the reflection and out to the Baobabs Amoureux; spends a night at Kirindy for the guided walk after dark, the eyes in the torch and the fossa at the camp's kitchen; eats the Vezo's fish on the beach with a THB; and, in the dry season and with days to spare, takes the road north to the Tsingy, which is the west's other wonder.

The Guide's honesty: the avenue is a road, not a park — there is no gate, no fee beyond the community's, and no shade —, and the sunset draws a crowd of a few hundred that the dawn does not; Madagascar's roads are among the worst on Earth and its distances are measured in hours, not kilometres, so the flight to Morondava is bought with the ticket, and the Tsingy is a season and a 4×4; cash is the economy and the ariary comes in bundles; the town is safe and slow, and the beach has its touts; and a line of eight-hundred-year-old giants going gold with the sun between them is one of the images of Africa's islands, which is why the Guide keeps this page in its late light.