Listening to the song of the forest

We stayed at the same hotel at both our visits to Andisabe – it is called Hotel Feon’ny Ala which is Malagasy for song of the forest. And indeed you can easily hear the song of the indris which live in the nearby national park. Actually at both our visits to the hotel we could spot the indri lemurs just across a small river. We actually had a better view of the indris from the hotel than we had during our visit to the actual national park where the indris were high in the trees and partially covered by leaves. So if you are lucky you might actually go here and get some top notch wildlife watching included in the price of the night stay.

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The hotel consists of a lot of bungalows on a hill which are cute to look at. At the top of the hill are a few hotel rooms which for some reason are half price of the bungalows. On our first stay we had a bungalow but when we returned all the bungalows were full so we had to take a hotel room. We actually found the room was better value than the bungalow. We had a lot of rain during our stay at the hotel and the room had a lower humidity than the bungalow which seemed never to dry during the day so your stuff would stay damp inside the room. So if you actually drop by the hotel you should consider staying at the hotel rooms instead of a bungalow.

The hotel has got a lot of plants and in addition to listening to the indri singing you can also hear the birds singing closer to your room.

There is a restaurant at the hotel which supposedly has got internet – but the internet is pretty dodgy and rarely worked during our stay. The restaurant tends to get very busy with many people on tour groups who are staying at the hotel. So service can get a bit slow. We tried the restaurant a couple of times but actually found the fairly big restaurant located right across the street was better value than the one at the hotel – and it actually had working internet. Especially the local Malagasy dishes were tastier at the restaurant across the street.