Ifaty, across the way from mainland africa

On the way here from toliear, you have some pretty bogged out roads, a few of which go through townships.
At the time of this writing (well a few months ago) the locals DIG out and make the roads bad so that when tourist vehicles come through and get bogged they charge you to help push your car out, some would say this is enterprising , it's just blackmail in my books.  The locals here actually do pretty well subsisting off their fishing in the mozambique channel, it's just greed beyond that.  Eventually maybe the government will do something about it but there is SO many roads that need work in this country, who knows when. Until something is done though expect to get bogged through this area at a few point in any non-fully 4-wheel drive vehicle.

Once you get there though the spiny forest is quite amazing, nearly all the plant life in the area has spikes, tree trunks ; the lot. It's hard to know why they all evolved this way, at some point they must have needed a lot of physical protection.