Plaisir Trek

The Plaisir trek is a 3-day trip which is suitable for experienced as well as non-experienced hikers. The journey will lead you through several villages, where you can experience the local Malagasy culture and enjoy the hospitality of the villagers. During the hikes and boat trips through the jungle, you will see the beautiful vegetation of Madagascar. En route you may come across cameleons, lemurs, gecko’s and numerous of other unique animals. The trip will be led by a English or French-speaking guide, as you like.

The trip per day

Day 1

Departure from Toamasina

Your guide will pick you up in the early morning to catch a ride from the taxi-brousse station towards Brickaville. The taxi brousse station is not far from Centre Lambahoany and the best way to go is by taking a pousse-velo, the Malagasy bike-taxis. Taxi-brousse means bushtaxi, but it is best described as a small van (or sometimes a car) which takes up to 14 people and drives between certain locations. You can find these vans almost everywhere in Madagascar. On your trip to Brickaville you will first pass a oil palm plantation of Savonnerie Tropicale, where the soap for the whole of Madagascar is manufactured from palm oil. One hour later, after a drive through a variety of green landscapes and road side villages, we will arrive in Brickaville, a busy little town. Before we head to the boat, you can get some additional breakfast at a hotely and do the final shopping with the guide at the market. The boat then departs for a trip up the river Rianala. After a few miles you will see the sugar refinery Sirama on your left. On the banks, small villages will appear behind banana trees and you can see woman doing laundry.

Anivorano

After a 3-hour boat trip, we will arrive in Anivorano, a beautifully situated village with large white sandy beaches. From the bank, you can enjoy a broad view across two joining rivers. Here we stop for lunch. After lunch, we will continue upstream towards Gisimay. During the trip you can see large rocks, banana and sugar cane plantations, villages and perhaps young boys with their zebus.

Gisimay

Our boat trip will end in about 2 hours in the village of Gisimay. A local guide and perhaps some porters for you luggage wait for us here. In a 1.5 hour walk we will head to the village of Sahamamy. We will be surrounded by a green landscape and clean air. No vehicles can reach this place and the only means of transport is on foot. We will spend the night in Sahamamy. The hospitable community will provide a meal and the musicians and children perform the traditional music and dancing. In our experience, you will be tired after this and so we will go to bed around 10pm.

Day 2

Sahamamy

Today we will visit the village of Sahamamy and the graphite mine. Our guide will tell us about the mine and its history, which was exploited during colonial times. On today’s walk we will pass different villages where we can see how raffia fibres are made from the leaves of the endemic raffia palm. Raffia is one of the few words from the Malagasy language which is known all over the world. After this visit we will walk through the virgin forests of Belambo to a natural swimming pool under a waterfall. Here we can go swimming to wash off the dust and sweat of today. Before dark, we will return to Sahamamy to have dinner and head for bed.

Day 3

Anivorano – Toamasina

After our second night in the village of Sahamamy, we will return to Gisimay by foot. From Gisimay we will take the boat back to Anivorano, where we will have lunch again. After the lunch we are going back to Brickaville. You can choose to go by taxi-brousse or boat (takes longer). In Brickaville, we will take a taxi-brousse to Toamasina, which will take 1.5 to 2 hours.