We flew to Nosy Be on one of the shakiest planes I’ve ever seen, and arrived with relief at our beautiful hotel by the beach, with a garden full of chirruping geckoes. Nosy Be is Madagascar’s downscale answer to neighbouring Mauritius, with crystal clear water, white sand beaches and a small rainforest reserve with well-marked trails. The fragrance of ylang-ylang permeates the island; one of only a handful of exporters of the popular perfume ingredient.

Lokobe reserve is a small private project, which has thankfully preserved a patch of island’s forest for the preservation of black lemurs and several reptile species. We spent a wonderful morning (it IS small!) identifying plant species and spying chameleons, boas and lemurs in the trees. Our young guide expressed sadness several times about the fragility of the reserve. It really is the last refuge for these species, and so limited in space that the future of those animals is bleak. He placed some hope in a project that looked to foreign investors to buy up land and donate it to the reserve, but as always in Madagascar, the need for rice outweighs the need for reptiles and the government is between a rock and a hard place on these policies.

The following morning, we took a traditional ‘pirogue’ outrigger to the nearby island of Nosy Komba – possibly the biggest tourist attraction in the country. On this tiny island, black lemurs are tame enough to jump onto your shoulder and steal your bananas! The experience is exciting and fascinating, but I couldn’t help noticing that the lemurs here were shabbier than in the mainland reserves, and I saw several being chased away for foraging around houses like raccoons: definitely not normal lemur behaviour. We finished the day with an amazing fresh fish barbecue on the beach, with a group of foreigners all surprised by the touristy experience we were having, since we’d all arrived from the mainland.

On our final day in Nosy Be, we rented a strange little golf-buggy vehicle to buzz around the island. We bounced down a farm track to look at a sacred banyan tree hung with red and white cloth offerings and bottles of rum and vanilla essence. On our way back, we accumulated a crew of five cheeky Malagasy children hanging impossibly from the buggy, and could only lose them with ball-point pens and boiled sweets.

We had heard there was a great lobster barbecue a few miles away and two and a half dusty, sweaty hours later we still weren’t there. We took refuge in the incongruously exquisite Vanila Hotel, treading red dust through its beautiful air-conditioned foyer, and enjoyed our last afternoon with a cold ‘Three Horses’ beer (the only one in Madagascar, known affectionately as ‘THB’) sitting in the infinity pool.

Nosy Be is a beautiful, fragrant, Indian Ocean paradise we never expected to find in Madagascar. But we were impatient to return to the big reserves to track down some rarer species. With a deep breath and silent prayer, we boarded another Air Madagascar rust-bucket bound for Mahajanga.