Make the right choice and go with Seed Madagascar!

I've been back home now for the past 4 weeks, and I'm still missing Sainte Luce! Being out there for 4 weeks you get into a routine so it was sad to leave the people and the beautiful landscape and wildlife behind. I decided to do my dissertation research whilst I was there, and had great support from both the London and Madagascar offices in helping to organise it and the good working relationship that Seed has with the local people made it easy to find participants!

I also joined the surveys and was amazed at how close we were to the local wildlife population, with a forest fragment only across the road from camp, and frequent visits from brown lemurs trying to steal bananas! The Malagasy guides are very informative and friendly and seem to have a natural ability to spot wildlife from a mile away- even from a moving taxi! The programme was very flexible allowing you to choose what activities you participated in and more importantly giving you plenty of time to take photos!

Although the idea of staying in a tent for longer than a week may put you off, investing in a good camping mattress meant that honestly you couldn't tell much difference, whilst the food was varied and there were plenty of opportunities to change it up a bit, including buying lobsters for £5! I think if you are considering volunteering in Madagascar but are a little bit hesitant about travelling alone, it is worth it in the end and was a lot less scary than I was expecting. More importantly, I knew that the money I was spending was genuinely going to the projects. My only regret is not organising to travel more around Madagascar, but this gives me an excuse to go back!