South Africa to Madagascar Tropic of Capricorn

Imagine a line more than 22,000 miles long

that cuts through some of the most remote areas of the southern hemisphere.

The Tropic of Capricorn marks the southern edge of the Earth's tropical zone.

It runs through southern Africa, Australia and South America.

This is just nature showing off!

Following the line will take me to beautiful but troubled regions of the world.

Ah! Bloody hell!

Capricorn passes through areas of desperate poverty...

political conflict...

and environmental devastation.

Just ripping it down, look at this!

This second leg of my journey takes me through South Africa

and Mozambique and across the sea to the magical island of Madagascar.

Can you imagine how dangerous this is?

I began my journey in South Africa,

where one of the closest towns to the Tropic of Capricorn is Louis Trichardt.

It's a provincial place

which takes its name from a white Boer general who led the Afrikaner settlers here in the 1830s.

Under apartheid, you wouldn't have seen many black faces on the streets of this town.

But as our guide Nhlanhla showed me, since apartheid ended in South Africa,

things appear to have changed dramatically.

It's a slight surprise to me

to come here and see actually

there aren't that many Afrikaners.

-There's one white guy over there.

-He's come to the bank.

Walking to the bank with his money, with his takings.

And I think that is it.

Everybody else here apart from me is black.

This doesn't really seem to be the Afrikaner stronghold that it once was.

If you can watch footage from those days, you'd only see white faces all around this area.

Why?

Because black people were not allowed to come to some of the places.

-Into the towns?

-Yeah, they were prevented from coming to town.

Today, Louis Trichardt is far more representative of South Africa's racial mix...

and many of the Afrikaners, who own most of the best farmland around the town, now feel under threat.

Crime has rocketed here in recent years and white farmers have been targeted.

I met Gideon Meiring, a former apartheid-era military officer,

who now heads a union of local white farmers and runs what he calls Townwatch.

Hello there.

This is Al Fass.

He's involved in Townwatch, he's also involved with our training.

-Townwatch?

-Ja.

With Trichardt Townwatch for example, previously there was a hell of a lot

of crime in Trichardt and after the involvement, it's down by about 95%.

So you run security patrols, do you?

-Yah.

-Well, this quite...

-This is a typical battle jacket.

-A battle jacket?

-Ja.

-Can I take it off?

-Yeah, you can.

So this what...

-is this what your guys wear?

-Yes, 100%.

This is on a lady at the moment. It'll probably fit on me, I'm a slender thing.

Wow, I feel a bit more macho in this, I feel a bit Rambo.

What is that? Is this a stun gun?

-Yeah.

-We don't need to see it tested. Well, we could try.

-Gideon could probably take the shot.

-Please not!

-Whoa!

Quite serious, eh?

While there is undoubtedly a huge crime problem in South Africa,

I began to suspect that Gideon's concerns ran a little deeper.

Die Boere is hier om te bly.

..te bly, ja.

The Boers are here to stay. OK.

We're going to do some shooting.

Gideon took us to the outskirts of town.

He wanted to show us how prepared he and his people are for any eventuality.

OK, they're dead!

They're really dead now!

When do you need, or why do you need to have an AK47?

-Uh...

-When would you need it?

-If you talk about the courses,

we train the people to handle an AK47

because the people who attack farmers on their farms from time to time make use of AK47s

R-4 automatic rifles, shotguns or whatever.

You basically want to have a bigger gun?

You must be in a position to handle that weapon and to return fire accurately.

-So some more bullets have come.

-Good.

-It might surprise you.

-OK.

Hold it steady.

Bloody hell!

-INAUDIBLE INSTRUCTIONS

-OK, hang on.

Mind the dog. Come out of the way, dog.

Bloody hell!

What's a little bit worrying for me is how

I get a rush from it, and it does make me feel powerful, actually...

-briefly powerful.

-Yes.

Ooh! I just shot an AK47.

Would you ever have had to have your self-defence organisation

before the end of apartheid? Would you ever have needed to do it then?

I think it's a bit more dangerous now, because at that stage we have had everything behind us, the laws,

the money, everything, the organisations, but today we're on ourselves.

Fuelling the insecurities of people like Gideon is what's happened in neighbouring Zimbabwe,

where many white farmers have had their lands forcibly seized by the government.

What's the likelihood or what are the chances that the government here

might try to do to the white farmers here what the government in Zimbabwe has tried to do over the border?

Is that something that worries you?

Ja, definitely, because there's always the possibility.

We look into situations like that and we must be in a position to handle it.

Zimbabwe's southern border lies north of Louis Trichardt,

just 75 miles from the Tropic of Capricorn.

Once an African success story, it's now one of the poorest countries on the continent.

Under the dictatorship of Robert Mugabe, the economy has collapsed

and hyperinflation has led to crippling shortages.

This border crossing is the main link between the two countries.

Ten years ago, it was booming.

Now, much of the trade is down to very basic goods.

Hello, gentlemen.

How are you?

-You're all crammed in there. Are you comfortable in there?

-Yes.

-It's very busy inside, so you're going back into Zimbabwe?

-Yeah, we're going to Zimbabwe.

-You've been doing been doing a lot of shopping, haven't you?

-Yeah. What can we do?

-What have you been buying?

-Huh?

-What have you bought?

-What is in the back here, what have you been buying?

-Just fish oil, rice, everything.

Can you not buy them in Zimbabwe now?

I can't buy because it is so expensive.

-Good luck.

-Goodbye.

People are taking very basic supplies into the country

because there really isn't anything for sale in the shops in Zimbabwe,

so people have to come out here, get some supplies and then head back.

Unemployment in Zimbabwe is now running at 80%.

People are starving. Most cannot afford to leave legally.

As we drove along the border we saw how desperate people have become to escape their collapsing country.

Oh, my God...

This is unbelievable.

Can you see? Look.

Are you OK?

You need something on that.

-You need something on that.

-Yes, sure.

What is your plan?

I'm just going to look for the insurance man

because things are tough in Zimbabwe.

Yes, just trying to...

to make ends meet on the South African side.

Where have you come from in Zimbabwe?

I'm from Bulawayo.

What's life like there? What's the situation like there?

The situation is tough in Zimbabwe.

The situation is tough on hunger, there's no food, so I'm trying to get something from South African side.

There's nothing in the shops,

there's no meat to buy.

-No milli meal to buy.

-No food?

-No fuel to buy.

-No fuel either?

We are starving in Zimbabwe,

so I jumped the border.

I've got no passport.

I want to be a man like you.

So I jumped the border

to get money in South Africa.

Thousands come over like this every week.

It's estimated that between one and three million Zimbabweans,

up to a quarter of the population, have entered South Africa illegally.

These guys don't know if they're going to make it to Johannesburg or not,

but they're just desperate for money and some food.

Most of the people fleeing Zimbabwe make for the big cities.

The next day, we met up with Gideon again, who seems determined to stop them getting there.

His organization runs a kind of informal border patrol.

They call themselves the Greenlights.

So where are we heading to now?

We're by a railway track, I can see that.

We are heading north now,

straight up to Zimbabwe, but we are not going to that border so far.

-You're not invading?

-No, no.

-OK.

When you're arresting these people what do you feel as you're doing it?

Do you have some sympathy for their situation?

Definitely so, ja. On the one hand you feel very sorry for them

because they're helpless, hungry, because of a certain political situation,

but on the other hand they threaten our safety and security, our wellbeing, our property,

even our lives, so it sounds like a contradiction but that is the situation.

As we made our way through the bush, the patrol appeared to have picked up a trail.

There are people in front, it seems.

Ah, the car has stopped in front.

So is this where they were?

-They're sleeping here inside.

-What was going on?

They're making fire there and maybe they used this building to sleep during night.

-So this is where they've been?

-Yeah.

Just in the railway...

building here.

This is where they think the guys were...

Ah, you can see there's a little fire that's been here.

Gideon's men had been on the hunt for nearly three hours and it seemed they might go home empty handed,

but as the sun went down they got a sighting.

So they've...

some of the guys have just stopped these two young black guys over here just to see who they are.

Don't try to run away.

Oh, my God, they really are...

they really are taking them.

These are just kids, you know, these are really just kids.

They've just caught two youngsters walking down the railway tracks,

carrying their belongings in two little bags,

and these kids have the look of utter resignation on their faces.

I don't really know what to say to you on this.

It's just a really awful situation.

They're just kids, you know?

Just kids trying to come across to get a job, get some money, have a meal.

The police will deport the border jumpers, but within a matter of days most of them will be back.

The next day we made our way across the country, back to the guiding line of our journey.

So we're getting very close.

We're very close to the line now.

Ah...yes!

Just crossed it. Just crossed the Tropic of Capricorn.

The spectacular Limpopo region boasts some of the most impressive wildlife on Earth.

Albert Appelcryn is a ranger at the Kapama Lodge, one of the many game reserves in the area.

-Do you want to see some giraffe?

-Do we want to see giraffe? Yes!

That's a small one. No, it's not, is it?

That's the mother. No, that's the mother and that's the baby there.

This may all look wild but the parks are actually

manufactured habitats which are home to all manner of wildlife.

One of the most popular animals among tourists is, of course, the mighty elephant.

How can he spot them? I can't see a thing.

Eagle eyes.

-There they are.

-Ah, yes, yes, yes!

-I can see the white of a tusk.

-We must give him a little bit of time.

-Yeah, so if we just...

keep quiet, sit still, maybe they'll come to us.

So if we're real lucky, they will go past, straight across the sun.

They're crossing the road just here.

What an amazing sight. Two, four, six, seven of them,

the big one there keeping an eye on us, and they're just pushing through the bush.

It really is an incredible sight.

But there's a major problem in South Africa.

There are simply too many elephants.

The numbers are increasing now because of huge attempts to save the elephant.

But now we are astonished - the numbers are very, very high.

-What, too high?

-Slightly too high, yes...

and very, very...need to manage the elephants now.

Why is there a problem if there's too many elephants?

Surely, I'm presuming, they're one of the great draws for tourists.

That's why tourists want to come here.

Yes, but they are causing a lot of damage to the eco system.

Here's another tree that's been knocked over.

This is actually quite a large one.

It's been pushed over by an elephant.

Damage like this removes the habitats of smaller animals,

threatening the survival of many other species.

But while the problem is a serious one, it's proved extremely difficult to limit the elephant population.

So plans have been drawn up to cull large numbers of elephants by shooting them.

It's hugely controversial, and the government is worried

that if culling happens, tourists might stay away.

How many elephants are they talking about culling, do you know?

Well, they say in Kruger National Park, they need to cull about 2,000 elephants for a start.

-2,000!

-2,000 elephants.

The Kruger National Park, the largest and most prestigious game reserve in South Africa,

told us the elephant issue is currently so sensitive they simply didn't want to discuss it with us.

The idea of culling the elephants seems to be a big debate at the moment

but no final decision has been taken, has it?

No, no final decision has been taken.

Every time they decide to cull, there's groups have come in and they stop the culling.

You're with Kapama Reserve and Lodge.

What's their position on this whole idea of culling the elephants?

Kapama is against the culling of elephants.

They would rather support different ways in controlling elephant populations.

The view of the Kapama Lodge is shared by many of the game reserves in the area.

But not everyone agrees.

Just ten miles down the road is the Moholoholo wildlife sanctuary,

run by Brian Jones, himself a former ranger.

-You're OK here.

-No, I'm going to hide behind you!

-Ooh!

Hello, hello.

Look at this! Is it OK to touch?

Yes, you could stroke him. He's got thick skin but that's fine.

He's a bit thick skinned, isn't he?

He's going to put his tail up now because he's being scratched.

-You've got a bit of metal that you're using...

-It's something sharp.

-..to make him feel it.

-Your hands are a bit soft. He needs something rough.

-You are...

you are very cute. You're ugly as hell but you're really cute.

I beg your pardon?!

Oh, there he goes, oh, he's going to go. Ohhhh!

-Oh, look at that.

-Come look at the ticks on the bottom here.

You've just seduced him. He's rolled over.

We don't use drugs here, we just charm them.

What an amazing creature.

Brian has an extraordinary way with his animals.

And he holds clear views on how Africa's wildlife should be managed.

Good boy!

Now he's going to get me at the gate here.

Hello, big boy. Hello, big...

-Not too close, he'll get cross.

-OK.

Hello, oooh big boy.

Ohhhh...

big boy.

Ohhhh, big...

LION ROARS

You're too close, unfortunately. He doesn't like it.

Him and I, we sit together, we talk together, like each other,

but as soon as people come near, he gets... It's called diverted aggression.

Can you tell me a little bit about the elephants in the Kruger

because we're hearing a lot about the threat of culling.

-What's your view on that?

-I think that's a misnomer, the threat of culling.

To me it's common sense. We have to cull.

Do people outside, conservationists in Europe or North America,

-do they understand what's going on?

-No, they don't.

We're not looking at saving just an elephant.

Don't we want to save the leopard, the lion, the cheetah,

the trees, the grass, the birds, the snakes, the rabbits?

We've got to put our human emotion aside and look at the whole picture.

To be really honest with you, all these little game parks with fences around,

inevitably in the end is going to do more harm than what cattle have done, because the guys have spent millions

buying the place, on the fence, putting the infrastructure up, now he's got to get tourists

to pay back, and now he's got to have animals there to show the tourists.

So he overstocks, and they're doing just as much harm.

That's the sad point, they're doing just as much harm.

It was once said Kruger Park had the biggest diversity of mammals in the world,

but that'll come to an end because already samango monkey's gone. Brown hyenas gone.

We're looking at oribi, sable, roan...

Roan's sitting at 30 animals left where we had thousands.

It's history.

Whooah!

You'd make a good cricket team.

Whooah!

We left South Africa behind and headed east to neighbouring Mozambique,

a country of 21 million people

still recovering from the devastating long-term effects of war.

This is Mickey.

-Hello, Mickey.

-Hi. How you doing? Good to meet you.

-Thank you.

-Welcome to Mozambique.

Thank you and you'll take us across the country?

-Yeah, I'll take you around.

-I'm quite excited about coming to Mozambique.

-It's beautiful.

So here we go, we're crossing into Mozambique.

It's a big border.

We've gone from South Africa, which is really perhaps the richest,

certainly one of the richest countries in Africa, into Mozambique which is one of the poorest.

The contrast with South Africa could barely have been more stark.

This side of the border is designated a national park,

but there wasn't a giraffe or hippo in sight.

Tell you what, it's a lot hotter here than it was in South Africa.

You also see there are some other quite marked changes.

This park on this side of the border is obviously frankly a lot poorer than the South African park.

There's a lot less wildlife over here,

and the roads are dusty and bumpy

whereas in Kruger they're much sleeker and smooth tarmac.

But Kruger is really more

of Disney World, compared to the wilderness that you get on this side of the border.

Between 1975 and 1992, a vicious conflict raged through Mozambique.

17 years of fighting ravaged the country.

Hundreds of thousands lost their lives.

Most of the wildlife was simply killed for food.

Strangely enough, what we did find dotted about this national park were people.

SHOUTING

A bit of confusion about where the head of the village is.

It's dowry payment going on over there.

-A dowry payment?

-Mmm.

-Would they mind if we went over to have a look?

-HE TRANSLATES

They seem very happy with that idea.

Yeah.

What are they saying? "Jababi"?

-"I'm drunk".

-They're saying, "I'm drunk"?

-VILLAGERS LAUGH

Have they all been on the sauce?

The Mozambican authorities and some conservationists think these villagers are a problem.

New plans to restock the park with wildlife

and draw in foreign visitors mean they now face eviction.

THEY ARE SINGING

Have you been told that you have to move out of the park, and what do you feel about this?

HE SPEAKS IN LOCAL LANGUAGE

'They said we were going to move.

'They promised to do everything, to replace the things we have here, the houses and animal shelters.

'All these promises are just lies.

'We accepted it because we respect the government but we're not moving.'

It's a slightly chaotic situation, but we've been talking to some of the village elders

and what they say is they've been told they have to leave the park

and they've been promised homes outside the park.

But the homes they've been offered are too small.

They're just not prepared to move out until they know these houses have been built

and they're a decent size, and unless that happens, they say they're not going to go.

The dilemma here is the same one you find all across Africa.

How to attract tourists by developing wildlife without trampling all over the locals.

The conflict here followed independence from Portugal in 1975.

The Marxist government fought right-wing rebels,

who were backed by the neighbouring South African regime,

angry at Mozambique's opposition to apartheid.

Although the war ended more than 15 years ago,

large parts of the country are still scarred with land mines laid during the conflict.

We went to see a Belgian based organisation which is helping to clear them...in a rather novel way.

My God, look at the size of them.

This is one of the mine-detector rats.

-She's... This is a she?

-Yes.

She is huge!

She is a colossal rat.

-Do they bite at all?

-No, these are friendly.

-Friendly rats?

-Yes.

Can I give him a bit of banana? Thank you very much.

Oh!

Yes, there we are. Go on.

Look at the camera, look cute.

Yes.

You are actually really cute, I have to say.

Ohh! Apart from when you...

scratch and grab.

So the rats will sniff around...

..and then they'll sense there's a landmine under the ground.

-And they scratch.

-They scratch, do they?

-Yes.

-They scratch at the surface. So they're being harnessed up.

This one is raring to go.

And there he goes, he's off.

The clearing work we were shown is a training operation.

These Gambian giant pouched rats can weigh several kilos

but they're still light enough to be able to walk over the unexploded mines without detonating them.

-Sniff...

-HE SNIFFS

..sniffing along to see what he can find.

They're easy to train and in a poor country like Mozambique,

they're much cheaper than conventional mine-clearing machines.

Oh, he's scrabbling at the ground.

He's scratching.

-Has he spotted one?

-Yes.

-He's spotted one.

This is the mine which Nelson found.

-This is a deactivated one.

-Yes.

But if this was a live mine, could that kill a person or it would injure them?

-Yes.

-It would kill them?

-Yeah.

They're so small, aren't they?

You can imagine if this was an area where people were living

and just over here you can see the kids over there.

This is again a populated area where people are trying to turn the land

into an area they can use for farming, and they come along and they start farming

and then they tread on a landmine or a kid finds it, picks it up and it goes off.

And so this is what the rats are able to find.

It's fantastic.

It's so simple.

Just a shrug of the shoulders, all in a day's work for you!

Rats like these have cleared over 400,000 square metres of land.

But hundreds of thousands of landmines are still believed to be left unexploded.

One of the striking things about Mozambique is how little industry there is.

Still officially one of the poorest countries in the world,

most of the countryside is without electricity or running water.

Commerce, such as it is, often takes place on a micro scale.

And you can see here they've got cashew nuts.

Yeah, they're cashew nuts in bags attached to the tree. This is the shop.

A very clever way of selling it.

Where are they from?

MICKEY TRANSLATES

He says he makes it himself.

-He fries them.

-He buys them...

He buys them raw and he fries them at home and cracks them and puts them in bags and sells them.

-So, he's quite a little entrepreneur then.

-Yeah.

-Good businessman. You're a good businessman, aren't you?

-Yeah.

Good for you, David.

The next day we headed north along the N1, the country's main highway.

We're just short of the line here.

I'm gonna take a few more steps...

Three...

two...

..one.

Just here, right here, this is the Tropic of Capricorn,

running across here.

And look, there's no traffic coming.

This is the main, this is the only road in Mozambique

running south to north, it's the main thread linking this country,

and it's 4 o'clock, Friday afternoon.

There's one car coming in the distance. There's nothing coming behind.

There's very little trade and transport along here.

It's hard to believe now, but before the war, Mozambique

was once one of the biggest tourist destinations in Africa.

Bob Dylan even wrote a song about the place.

# I like to spend some time in Mozambique

# The sunny sky is aqua blue

# And all the couples

# dancing cheek to cheek

# It's very nice to stay a week or two. #

Tourists are beginning to return and we were heading for one place

the government hopes will really put the country back on the map again.

Set on the Indian Ocean, Vilanculos is the great hope of the country's fledgling tourist industry.

The big attraction here is Bazaruto archipelago,

five paradise islands strung out along the coast

just off the mainland.

We're just off to the islands of Bazaruto ahead of us.

We're going in this little boat in front of us.

It looks a bit bigger close up.

Bazaruto is famed for it's luxury eco-tourism,

offering serenely isolated beaches, and some of the best diving and marine wildlife in the world.

So this is one of the main lodges on the island

and people will pay anything up to a grand a night to stay here.

You have quite a few celebrities coming and staying here, I mean we've had Leonardo DiCaprio

was staying here with his family when he was here shooting Blood Diamond.

But that sounds as though that's just the type of tourist

that the Mozambique government wants to attract.

They don't want to attract riffraff like me, for example.

Yeah, it seems like it, but it's quite beautiful and it's isolated.

I think the people come here because it's a getaway,

you're far away from everybody but it's beautiful, it's really beautiful.

Mickey had arranged for us to stay with Paulino,

one of the 2,000 people who live on the island.

-Hello, nice to meet you.

-Hello, Simon.

The luxury resorts say they have helped the local community.

But it didn't seem that many of Leonardo's dollars had found their way here.

In fact, less than 100 of the 2,000 islanders are employed in the tourist industry.

We bedded down for the night in Paulino's guest suite.

RAIN IS BATTERING DOWN

It's started to pour with rain now, in the middle of the night.

Absolutely pouring down

and you can hear it on the...

..on the corrugated iron roof.

Chris the producer has just stumbled in.

He was sleeping in a tent and the tent just collapsed in the rain.

"Come to paradise," they said,

"tropical island,

"sun-kissed beaches."

The reality is not always what you expect.

The rain was coming down on the corrugated iron for hours.

It sounded like we were sleeping under a waterfall.

I think we've probably had about three hours sleep each.

Just a fraction of the money from tourism has been invested in this community.

And the government has so far blocked the Bazarutans' plan

to start up their own tourism business on the island.

Do you feel that you've been let down?

Do you feel you've been lied to about the benefits you'd get from tourism?

TRANSLATION: We had plans of building a campsite here

that would have benefited the community,

and it would have increased our income.

Now we are dependent on others for money.

Perhaps the saddest thing about Paulino's situation

is that he spent his youth fighting for the future of his country

on the government's side in the war.

I wasted my time fighting, defending our land, and now I live in really poor conditions.

The salary I make is very small.

I can't support my children properly.

What am I supposed to do? Mozambique is the place I was born.

I have nowhere else to go.

So here we go, we're off to Madagascar now

with just a few of our bags.

Hopefully we haven't got the pilot who brought the last plane in

because the last plane that just landed went off the runway.

On here?

There are no direct flights from Mozambique to our next destination, Madagascar.

First, we had to return to South Africa

before heading onto the Madagascan capital, commonly known as Tana.

We were then to head south to pick up our journey along Capricorn.

Or at least that was the plan.

We've arrived in Madagascar, we're still in the airport.

We've had a bit of a baggage disaster.

This is some of our equipment here, but most of it, some of the most crucial bits haven't turned up.

We think they're still in Johannesburg.

Bagless, we headed into town.

Madagascar was a French colony until 1960

and Tana was like nothing I'd ever seen before.

One moment you felt you could be in a quaint suburb of Paris,

with its cobbled streets and 2CVs.

The next, in a more mediaeval world,

powered by one of the iconic symbols of this country,

the ubiquitous zebu cattle.

Batsola, our local guide, showed me around.

Maybe there's some medicinal herbs.

Here in Madagascar you have a lot of strange things,

we have a lot of things here, like this or zebu crock or something.

Sorry? What was that?

Oh, you don't know that we have, we eat zebu crock.

-Crock?

-Crock.

-Penis?

-Yes.

-Zebu penis.

-Zebu penis.

-All right, so you eat zebu penis.

-Yes.

Why?

Because it's good.

In England you have tea.

Here we have soup.

You have soup.

Yeah, and there is different kind of soup, and one of them is zebu cock soup.

I know what's going to happen now. Cut to a restaurant.

I know this is going to happen, I might as well just surrender.

-Maybe we need to wait for it to cool down.

-Yes.

Has she got any zebu penis to show us, so we've got a sense of...

-of this delicacy?

-Let me ask.

Yes, she has.

Oh, good, good, that's great.

Thank you for this.

I mean we've got a long way to go together

and I was starting to like you, Batsola.

-Yes.

-And now look what you've done.

Let me put it like this and then you...

Oh, my God! It's still moving.

I prefer it when it's still attached to the original owner.

Ooh, feel like I'm crossing my legs now.

Oh, my God!

Well, here we go. Come on then. Be brave.

It tastes sort of like gelatine.

A blob of... with a slight...

slight kick in it.

I swear to God I think I can taste urine.

Two days later, reunited with our luggage,

we finally made it to Tulear,

400 miles south of the capital, and back on the Tropic of Capricorn.

Tulear sits on the edge of one of the great wonders of Madagascar,

a unique landscape known as the Spiny Forest.

'Coca Rakotomalaza has spent most his life studying this ancient habitat.'

Looking at this I would have thought it was almost dead.

Yeah, it looks like dead because we are now in the dry season so they lose all their leaves.

OK. These are really sharp.

What is this?

This is endemic species for the south.

Belongs to the family of Dideraceae.

Has it got a common name?

English...octopus tree.

-In English this is called octopus tree.

-Octopus tree.

Many species are just found in Madagascar.

Perhaps the greatest resident of the Spiny Forest is the mighty baobab.

Look at that!

This is amazing!

You know how long this baobab have been here?

Maybe ten hundred.

1,000 years!

1,000 years.

Coca just said that the story of the Baobab is that

it's such a proud tree, God got angry,

so he lifted it out and put it back in,

and what we think of as the top is actually the roots.

It's an upside-down tree.

My image of Madagascar when I was a child

was very much of almost a bit of a paradise

with plants and animals and trees covering the whole island.

How much of the forest is left?

10% of forest left.

-10%?

-10% over all the land.

-Across the whole island.

-The whole island.

So 90% has been cut down.

Cut down and burnt and now we lose all of this.

So this is one of the last bits of proper forest

that is left on Madagascar.

'Much of Madagascar, the world's fourth largest island, was once covered by indigenous forest.

'What's devastated it is the practice of tavy, or slash and burn.

'You can see it everywhere.'

So this area looks to my inexpert eye,

is this all slash and burn, is this what we've been talking about?

Yes, this is a slash and burn area I talked about.

What was this?

This is octopus tree.

-So this is the octopus tree we saw in the forest.

-In the forest.

Here it's been chopped and burnt.

It's been chopped and burnt.

So here we've got a tree which is still on fire,

I can see the fire underneath,

so this is slash and burn at the moment.

This is what's happening across the whole of Madagascar.

Yes.

'Slash and burn is mainly done to clear land for cash crops and the grazing of zebu.

'The great tragedy is that the burnt soil can only sustain crops for a few years

'before the land is left useless and the devastation is continued elsewhere.'

When you see what's been lost, the fact that 90%

of the forest in Madagascar is gone, how does that make you feel?

Sad, because some of this plant are not still identified

so every day maybe you lose a new species

that hasn't been determined before.

It's hard not to feel depressed at the destruction of so much unique natural beauty,

but Coca believes simply blaming the local people for doing it

doesn't address the root of the problem.

To say destroy it is not maybe the right word because people need land,

people need to feed themselves and I think we have to find another way

to feed these people, another way to grow crops for these people

and that will help us to reduce the loss of forest.

Slash and burn in Madagascar has been recognised internationally as a major environmental issue.

New laws are belatedly trying to preserve what's left of the forests.

We left Tulear, and drove east across the country.

Even though much of the indigenous forest has been lost,

Madagascar remains a stunning place.

Every turn in the road seemed to reveal yet another extraordinary landscape,

and the villages, too, could throw up a surprise.

Now it's trying to get into the car.

What does it want?

It's got the tail of a racoon but I think this is a lemur, isn't it?

-Yes.

-So this is one of Madagascar's most famous animals really,

and this guy has just got it sitting on his head.

They are disappearing because the forest is disappearing.

But some place in the National Park there are a lot of lemurs

and they are now protected by the law.

Super cute though.

We'd come to Ilakaka.

10 years ago this place was so small it didn't even appear on most maps.

Then sapphires were discovered,

and a tiny rural hamlet exploded into a modern day wild-west town.

An estimated 100,000 poor Madagascans have flocked here to dig their way out of poverty.

'Most take their chances in the ad hoc operations dotted all over the outskirts of town.'

Bonjour. Bonjour.

Jean is from Fianarantsoa, 150 miles away.

He's the captain of this mine,

which is little more than a deep hole in ground,

ventilated in the most rudimentary way imaginable.

Oh, my God! This is a breathing tube.

Can you imagine how dangerous this is?

This is just plastic sheeting with a little bit of tape around it to hold it together.

'Jean descends down this 18-metre hole up to ten times a day.

'For this he will make about £1.'

God! He's already just disappeared.

He's just vanished into the blackness!

And this shaft isn't much bigger than a manhole

and they've just cut it down, straight down through the ground,

there's no bracing on the sides,

there's no reinforcement to prevent it caving in.

I can just see this tiny man and a shiny torch

putting soil into the bag.

He's crawling down a hole under here,

to somewhere under the ground deep below there,

gathering the soil into bags and then he'll send it back.

Each time they're hoping this is the big one,

the sapphire they're looking for is in there.

'Many workers have died down these mines.

'Often, their families are too poor to recover their bodies

'and they are simply left at the bottom of the dark holes.'

Here he comes. Are you OK, Captain?

What does your wife think of you doing this dangerous work?

TRANSLATION: We can only pray and rely on God.

The main worry is "Will I survive today?"

But that's the risk of the job, you need to survive,

there's nothing else to do.

The miners bring their stones here, to the local gem market,

which is run almost exclusively by Sri Lankan and Thai dealers.

That's a nice colour.

So as you can see inside there,

there's a pink purple inside. That's quite..

that's really beautiful.

I think you should pay a lot of money for that one.

There's a guy who's just put his hand through this window

and he's just dropped a stone into the plate here,

and the guy, the buyer here, is just going to take a look at it and decide if he likes it.

So he wasn't happy with that, so he's off to look for another dealer.

'Millions of pounds worth of sapphires are mined here every year. and then exported.

'They're cut, polished and sold on the world markets.

'That's when the real profit is made.

'Very little of the money comes back to Ilakaka.

'It's a source of frustration for Madagascans, like our guide, Batsola.'

The thing that really surprised me about this place

is for a town at the centre of a gem rush

with people digging emeralds and sapphires out of the ground,

everybody was dirt poor there.

It happens all the time here in Madagascar.

When you have every kind of resources, petrol, sapphire,

Malagasy people stay all poor and all the money go out of Madagascar with the Sri Lankan,

with the Canadian, with the European, with the American, with the Japanese.

All the time that's happen,

all the time here in Madagascar and that's a pity, that's a shame.

150 miles north east of Ilakaka

is the beautiful highland town of Fianarantsoa.

The old town has cobbled, winding streets

and a unique Malagasy style of architecture.

We'd come here to catch a train to the eastern coast of Madagascar,

the end of our journey.

The guy says the train is currently running three hours late,

so we didn't need to get up at five o'clock after all.

The train comes from Switzerland

but it certainly doesn't run on Swiss time.

We've got a train!

It's only about seven hours late.

CHEERING

We're on the way.

The train runs on one of the steepest tracks in the world.

It descends from more than 3,500 feet down to sea level

and along its 100 miles, there are 48 tunnels and 67 bridges.

Where else in the world do you think they'd let us do this?

But this is more than just a passenger train.

There's a lot of Malagasy travelling on the train.

They're using it to get around,

but crucially they're also using it for trade.

The daily train service provides a vital economic link between

the highlands and the eastern coast of Madagascar.

For most people along this line, the train is their main link with the outside world.

This is a coffee tree as you see, sorry but I can't get them.

-You can't quite reach.

-Yeah, but maybe you.

-I can pull it down. This is a coffee bean, just there.

-Yeah.

So, there we go. You can just eat it with your...

Oh, yes, that's really sweet.

-So you just bite it off.

-Yeah, and you have your coffee.

And that's the coffee there.

What's the importance of this railway to farmers in an area like this?

What does it enable them to do?

If the railroad is not here,

they can't export the coffee or the banana,

so they don't have money to buy rice, so they have to produce rice.

And if the produce rice they have to cut the forest and we need to protect the forest.

'The role this railway played in protecting the environment

'became clearer as we headed further down the line.'

We're about half way through our journey,

it's taken about five hours to get here, and the landscape is incredible.

The vegetation, everywhere you look,

it's green, all different shades of green.

Our light is the only light here.

We've just come back to our carriage

and we can see there's no lights on the train,

but there's also no lights in the village where we are,

and this is the reality across most of the country.

Most of Madagascar doesn't have electricity.

Despite the lack of power or lights,

nothing seems to stop the relentless bustle of trade.

This is a kind of cake, Malagasy cake.

It's a slightly Dickensian scene inside this carriage,

with everybody lit by candlelight.

The last four hours of the journey were spent in almost total darkness.

Just us, the mosquitoes, and the smell of urine.

Oh, God, I thought we were never going to get here.

We are now on the east coast of Madagascar.

We're nearly at the end of our journey,

but we should wait and see what the coastline looks like tomorrow in the daylight.

I'd finally made it to the very edge of Madagascar,

more than 1,000 miles along Capricorn,

from the plains of South Africa

to Manakara, a lazy seaside town, with an end of the world feel.

It's been a journey full of contrasts, drama and surprises.

And I've still got a long way to go.

We've crossed Africa, we've crossed Madagascar, we're at the sea.

Next stop, Australia.

Next time, I go across the heart of the Australian outback.

Who would want to go anywhere else bar living here?

Discovering the secrets of this vast country.

I took decades to create the poverty.

To find out more about the journey, visit our website.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

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