In the west of Madagascar near the town of Belo-sur-Mer lies a 12000-hectare swathe of pristine landscape that makes up Kirindy Mitea National Park. The park is endowed with a vast variety of ecosystems – dry deciduous woodlands, tropical rainforests and otherworldly spiny forests, coastal mangroves, dunes, lakes, beaches and reefs – all of which can be explored in the space of a single day. The grand baobabs found here are among Africa’s most impressive (some of them reach a height of 40 metres), and the region sustains a rich density of primates, including Madame Berthe’s mouse lemur, the smallest primate in the world, which is found nowhere else on earth.