Sainte Marie: the island of Malagasy pirates

Historic refuge of European pirates in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the island of Sainte Marie off Madagascar still hosts a cemetery with tombs of buccaneers.

A car or boat remains necessary to explore the island.

The Pirates' Cemetery, on Île aux Forbans, houses tombs attributed to European privateers who used the island as a base for attacking merchant ships in the Indian Ocean.

A few minutes away, the eastern coast of the island offers observations of humpback whales, which migrate every year between July and September to breed in the warm surrounding waters.

Continuing along the coast, one reaches beaches of white sand bordered by coconut palms, among the least developed touristically in Madagascar.

Toward evening, the fishing villages of the island offer freshly grilled fish according to Malagasy culinary traditions passed down by generations.

According to tradition, Sainte Marie also hosted a brief and perhaps legendary pirate colony called Libertalia, of which few historical proofs remain certain but numerous tales have been passed down over the centuries.

The humpback whales that migrate each year along the coast of Sainte Marie travel thousands of kilometers from Antarctica to reproduce in the warmer tropical waters of the Indian Ocean.