Madagascar Travel Answers

>For anyone planning to travel to Madagascar in the next few weeks, it might be worth reconsidering your plans (and perhaps checking your travel insurance policy to see if you are covered for cancelling your trip if you don't feel up to dealing with this level of uncertainty). Just a comment on this, Catherine: most travel policies will not let you cancel - with a refund -on a "what if" unless you've added an expensive rider that covers you for that. Having just looked at the US State Department's page for Madagascar, I see they've been cautioning about unrest there for some time, and listed some specific areas to avoid. My guess is that this alert could negate any recoup of travel$ committed after the date it was issued. - sort of a "buyer beware" in case of travel.

Agreed - and given that poor old Madagascar has coups every couple of years, I wouldn't be surprised to see it as a specific exclusion from travel insurance policies! I am passionate about Madagascar and pretty intrepid when it comes to travelling in the developing world (probably because I've spent the majority of my time working in it), but even I would be a bit wary of travelling there at the moment. Such a shame.

Yes, aways a shame when unrest complicates travel to lovely places! Just thought I'd mention the bit about insurance as there was just an article in our local paper about that. It seems that a fair amount of nervous individuals get cold feet over general alerts (like the current, "possible terrorism" one for citizens from US, UK, etc. traveling to continental Europe) and expect to just back out of their trips with full refunds. No go - can't do on just a "what if" as the insurance firms would go broke paying skitterish travelers! There has to be a pretty serious "DO NOT TRAVEL" warning issued AFTER the date your policy was issued for a partial or full refund. And even more timely, persons who have decided to register their objections to full-body scans/pat-downs - where those are applied - by canceling their trips will also forfeit their trip costs.

It looks alike the former club DJ, Rajoelina, is still hanging on to the power. He ousted the former leader in a semi coup, and these protests have to do with the elections on the constitutional referandum. Intresting point, - one of the ammendments is that you have to be a six month resident in order to be a presidential candidate next year. This ammendment is strictly to keep the exiled former president from trying again. Anyway, the military that backed Rajoelina in the last coup, led by the a Colonel Andriasoelina, had announced that he would dismantle the authority held by Rajoelina, and rule the country by committie, - but failed. (I do follow African politics in general........) I get a lot of info from The Africa Report, but find it more comprehensive in the print edition. http://www.theafricareport.com/

Quite right. Another interesting amendment proposed to the constitution is to drop the minimum age for President from the current lower limit of 40 to 35 ... which is, of course, a complete coincience that the DJ happens to be 36!!!