Fiona McIntosh is the former editor of Divestyle magazine, author of Dive Sites of South Africa & Mozambique and contributor to numerous international SCUBA diving titles.

As I discovered when I spent a month travelling the length and breadth of the island to provide content for a website, Madagascar has many facets. And for the intrepid traveller, there’s much more than the obvious tourist attractions of giant baobab trees, cute lemurs, weird and wonderful chameleons, bustling markets, laid back beachfront hotels and exotic spice tours. That journey was fascinating, but it’s the life under the shimmering ocean surface that has taken me back year after year. I just love donning a mask and snorkel and finning out over the shallow reefs, ogling turtles and colourful reef fish and feeling the warm water wash away all my cares. But it’s the SCUBA diving that really blows me away. Madagascar’s diving is seriously under rated – for my money the clear waters off Nosy Be, in north-west Madagascar, offer some of the best and most bizarre diving in the world.


Fiona McIntosh is the former editor of Divestyle magazine, author of Dive Sites of South Africa & Mozambique and contributor to numerous international SCUBA diving titles.

My wonderlust comes from my early days as international fencer, which took be behind the Iron Curtain and to relatively unknown parts of the world like Cuba and Korea way back in the 1970s. Since then, in between writing a few books and churning out magazine articles. I’ve skied to the north and south pole, climbed the highest peaks, dived to the depths and kayaked raging rivers. Do I sound like an adrenalin junkie? That would be about right then!