Including the beautiful Ankarana reserve in your vacation itinerary is practically mandatory. This incredible park is a feast of limestone caves, forest-filled canyons and a network of underground rivers. It is said to have the highest density of primates of any forest in the world, and the quirky, rather big, green, leaf-tailed geckos make a particularly novel appearance amongst chameleons, a host of different lemurs, the world’s only known cave-dwelling crocodiles, and the night active lepilemurs found mostly in tree cavities.

Set in the northern reaches of Madagascar, roughly two hours’ drive from Diego Suarez, the Ankarana Special Reserve, a popular stop for safaris in Madagascar, lies on a relatively small vegetated limestone plateau that slopes gently off to the east, but ends abruptly in the west in a sheer cliff called the “wall of Ankarana”. But it is the limestone spires and gorges that are the stars of the show in the reserve. They give Ankarana an almost otherworldly atmosphere that the tsingy, an impressive spiky limestone forest found in Ankarana and a couple of places in Madagascar, merely reinforces.

Ankarana has earned something of a reputation for its extensive systems of caves – there are over 100 kilometres of mapped caves formed by slightly acidic rivers as they wind through the limestone formations. Four major rivers run through the park – the Ankarana, the Besabola, the Antenan Ankarana and the underground river of Manjeba. Highlights of a vacation here include the sunken forest – that lies between two sections of the Andrafiabé Cave, the crystal cave – with incredibly striking cavern formations; and the bat cave, where a collection of giant bats reside.