MADAGASCAR – THE ISLAND CONTINENT OF THE WORLD .

We should have an eighth continent. Not seven, but eight, and the eighth should without doubt be Madagascar. It has been separated from Africa for nearly 160 million years. It separated from the African continent when Africa was still attached to Antarctica and South America and started to do its own thing all those years ago! Evolutionary speaking, Madagascar is in a league of its own, known to scientists as one of the seven biodiversity hotspots of the world.
It has been uncared for for decades under French colonial negligence and later under more African-like Marxist ideology but it has entered a new phase in the last three years. The former mayor of the capital city, Antananarivo, has become president and has vowed to accelerate tourism infrastructure, and much to international acclaim, has decreed that by 2010, 10% of the country will be managed under a new National Parks system.
Madagascar is famous for the incredible number of habitats that is enjoys: from the unique spiny desert in the south west, where 9 out of the 13 species of our planet’s baobabs are found, through to one of the wettest rain forests in the Indian Ocean- the Masoala peninsula in the north east. It has a spine of mountain that run all the way through its middle with the central highlands being the most populated, and then there are the beaches and diving. 
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