Eight Views of Africa

by Dominic Chadbon, 11 October 2007

We've seen these in slick wildlife documentaries and glossy travel brochures. Some of us may travel to them only to tick them off a list or buy the t-shirt ... but none of us will fail to be to blown away by these iconic views of Africa.

Victoria Falls on Foot

With a kilometre and a half of water charging down a 100m precipice at one million litres per second, the noise is deafening - and the sheer energy of the Victoria Falls leaves you humbled and dizzy. David Livingstone called it a sight upon which 'angels must have gazed'.

Walk a little way upstream to see the brown swirling Zambezi rushing hurriedly along until it drops gut-wrenchingly onto the battered boulders far below, sending up a plume of mist, a silver feather curling lazily into the washed-out pale blue sky.

Cape Town from Table Mountain

However you climb the mountain - by way of craggy Skeleton Gorge or swaying up the cableway - your efforts are rewarded with the view of a sapphire ocean, studded with white scraps of sail, on one side, a broken-toothed mountain range on the other.

As the afternoon cools watch the ring of mountains that hem in Cape Town - they seem to move closer, their harsh edges becoming rounded as the indiscriminate midday grey turns orange, purple and olive.

Mount Kilimanjaro from Amboseli National Park

A snow-capped mountain gazing over the African savannah is the last thing you'd expect to see when bumping around on a game drive in the sapping heat but there it is, rising with stately grace from the flat plains.

It's become de rigueur to climb this ancient volcano, which reaches up nearly 6,000m into an indigo sky - and the view from the top is understandably awesome. But for the real view of Mt Kilimanjaro, sit in the shade of an acacia on the grasslands and wait for an ambling elephant or curious giraffe to complete the scene.

Okavango Delta From the Air

As you skim across the sky towards Botswana's Okavango Delta a flat, parched and dusty brown Kalahari landscape gives way to a glinting river, flanked by the thinnest of green margins. Suddenly, stretching to the shimmering horizon is a kaleidoscope of water and vegetation.

Deep blue channels wind through green floodplains; shallow streams reveal golden sandbanks and the spires of tree-covered islands built on termite mounds form Nature's cathedrals.

At closer sight you'll spot a handful of white egrets in flight, juxtaposed against a black lagoon, the battleship grey of an elephant moving slowly along the green sea and the russet coats of lechwe antelope running, rocking horse-style, across the floodplains.

Wildebeest Crossing the Mara River

There are countless places to view the famed wildebeest migration but nothing quite beats the scene on the banks of the Mara River. The tide of animals builds up in a chorus of increasingly nervous lowing and grunting; they're all too aware that these are the feeding grounds of the enormous Nile crocodiles.

The line breaks and in a blur of shattering water and movement the wildebeest thunder across. The crocodiles torpedo in on the unlucky few.

Dawn at Sossusvlei

Sunrise from one of the mighty sand dunes of the world's oldest desert seems like a good idea the night before. But as you trudge up the soft sliding slopes in the Namib's freezing dawn with your rasping breath the only sound, you question your judgement.

Reaching the crest you look around: amorphous gunmetal grey dunes roll out into the darkness. A smear of light in the east and suddenly the sun spills over the horizon drenching the dunes with colour. They burn bright orange, almost fluorescent, and their lines become razor sharp, surgical slices of colour and contrast. An excellent idea, after all.

A West African Market

A market is a market you might think but nothing compares to the sensory feast of a market in West Africa.

White crescent smiles from indigo faces, dog-eared wads of notes flash from folds of outrageously patterned robes and wraps, impossibly elegant women float past balancing a load on their heads: fish, papayas, bananas, cloth.

Imagery vies with motion: curls of blue smoke twist from cooking fires, small children dash past pushing wire cars and good-natured chaos erupts when a goat escapes its confines and bids for a short-lived freedom.

Lakes of Flamingos

For one of Africa's most surreal juxtaposition of colours, take a flight over Kenya's Lake Nakuru. The mind-numbingly dull brown scrub gives way to a sea, its pink beaches made up of flamingos in their millions.

From the ground it is a confusing mass of feathers and mirages, but from above it's a palate of intense colours: turquoise algae, aquamarine water, blinding white soda deposits and finally soft pink clouds that erupt into scarlet when the birds take off.

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