Day 1: Arrival in Antananarivo

13 August 2025

We arrived in Antananarivo at 3.00 in the afternoon after 40 hours of travelling, feeling totally exhausted and confused about the time (it is 9 hours behind NZ). Apart from being somewhat grueling, it was a fairly uneventful journey. We had the luxury of a fairly leisurely start, fine weather and the use of the Air New Zealand lounge at the start of our journey before a 7.5hr flight to Perth, Australia. At Perth, we had an 8.00 hour transit to endure – made worse by not being able to use the lounge as technically the ongoing flight was operated by South African Airlines, despite it being a code share flight with AirNZ. One attendant let us in at the beginning but after we came back from a walk, a new person wouldn’t let us back in. So we had to fend for ourselves, eventually finding a couple of couches in a corner where we could lie down for a (long) while. Once we boarded our next flight it was 4.00am for us and facing our 3rd dinner of the day didn’t really appeal. With the aid of a sleeping tablet we managed to get some sleep at least during the 11.5 hour flight to Johannesburg. We had to reclaim our bags and then check in for the final leg of our journey to Antananarivo in Madagascar – thankfully there were some helpful airport staff to help us negotiate our way from one terminal to the next and then back again (very confusing!). We found a café near the departure gate and got a seat with views out over a magnificent sunrise (and the runway) whilst we enjoyed our drinks and the most enormous muffins I have ever seen. After 5 hours we boarded the Airlink plane for the final  3 hour flight to Madagascar.

Arrival in Madagascar was a lot more complicated than it needed to be. We filled in the forms that we had been given on the plane but once we got to passport control they told us we needed to fill in different, much more detailed, forms requesting all sorts of unexpected details that we then had to try to access in our bags whilst standing in a queue with masses of other people trying to do the same. Then we had to see 3 different people to get our passports checked and stickered and stamped. Thankfully our luggage was just coming out as we came through and then we went out through ‘Nothing to Declare’ to see almost immediately the welcome sign of our tour guide.

Kenny will be our guide for the next couple of weeks, along with driver Hasina. The Relais des Plateau Hotel is only a short distance away and we are quickly checked in. We decide to go for a bit of a walk around the hotel and on the street outside – mostly to get some sunlight to help with jet lag but also to get our bearings a bit. Then we have some time to shower, rest and sort out our bags before dinner that evening in the hotel restaurant with Kenny and our other group members – there will just be four of us.

Although there are only four of us in the group, there were 8 of us for dinner: Kenny and Hasina (who we met earlier); Bruce and Bernadette from Brisbane (who arrived yesterday); and Kennedy and Stephanie from Authentic Madagascar Tours (who operate the tour for Bunnik). Kenny and Hasina are independent contractors, and Kenny has been the main guide for Bunnik since 2016. It turns out to be a special dinner to celebrate Bunnik’s 30 years in operation (and Authentic Madagascar Tours for 25) – we even have a cake.

Anne & I are zonked and head off to bed as we have an early start in the morning.

Hasina and Kenny

Cutting the cake – with Kennedy, Kenny and Bruce

Celebratory Cake

Celebration dinner