Adventure Ride · Half or Full Day
Take the handlebars and follow your guide down red-earth tracks through plantations, villages and viewpoints the tour buses never reach.
After a short briefing and practice loop, the convoy sets off behind your guide — no experience needed, the automatic quads are easy to master. The route mixes coastal tracks, shaded plantation lanes smelling of ylang-ylang, and climbs to viewpoints over the crater lakes. You'll splash through fords in the green season and stop in villages where kids race the bikes to the edge of town.
The full-day version reaches the far north beaches and stops for lunch (meals not included); the half day is a compact loop ideal for cruise passengers or as an afternoon activity.
This is the same island day as our 4×4 tour — Mont Passot, the sacred crater lakes, the sunset — but here you drive. After a short briefing and a practice loop, you set off behind your guide on your own automatic quad, no experience needed, and climb the red-earth tracks into the green heart of Nosy Be. It is dusty, hands-on and a lot of fun, and it reaches the same views under your own power.
The tracks climb to Mont Passot, the highest point on Nosy Be, where the whole archipelago opens up beneath you. Cupped in the hills lie a string of deep crater lakes, drowned volcanic vents ringed by forest — several of them sacred, home to sacred crocodiles and protected by fady, the local taboos. Your guide, who is from here, parks the quads and walks you to the best of the viewpoints.
On the full-day ride we time it so you reach the top for the last hour of light. You park the quads, and the sun slides down over the outer islands while the crater lakes below turn to copper and then to silver — the same sunset the tour buses queue for, earned on your own two wheels.
Nosy Be earns its nickname on the way. The tracks run through ylang-ylang country — the flower distilled here for perfume — past sugarcane, coffee and pineapples ripening at the roadside, hamlets where children run out to wave, and rises where the whole bay opens up in front of you. It is the part of the island you can smell before you see it, and on a quad you are right in it.
By mid-ride you have earned it: we pull in at a waterfall, cut the engines and swap the dust for cool, clear water. Swim, sit on a rock in the spray, or just catch your breath in the shade before the ride back. On the full-day trip there is time for a proper lunch stop too, laid out in the shade with the quads parked in a row behind you.
See all our trips on the Nosy Be tours page. Prefer to sit back and be driven? The very same route — Mont Passot, the crater lakes and the sunset — is our 4×4 island tour.
✓ Quad bike with fuel, helmet, lead guide, briefing and practice, bottled water. A refundable damage deposit may apply.
A standard car licence is enough to drive; passengers need none. Minimum driver age 16, and children can ride pillion with a parent.
Closed shoes, sunglasses and clothes you don't mind getting dusty — or muddy in the green season. Helmets are provided.
Reserve online through our contact form — no payment, card details or transfer are needed to hold a date. For some tours we ask for a deposit the day before departure, paid in cash to your guide when you meet. Everything else is paid to your guide on the day of the tour, in cash (EUR, USD or MGA) or by mobile money. We never ask for online payments or bank transfers — if anyone contacts you claiming to be us and asks for one, it is not us.
85 € per person. A refundable damage deposit may apply. You pay your guide on the day of the tour, in cash or by mobile money — nothing is charged when you reserve.
A quad bike with fuel, a helmet, a lead guide, a briefing and practice run, and bottled water. A refundable damage deposit may apply.
Rather sit back and enjoy the view? The private 4×4 island tour covers the same highlights with a driver.