Africa Travel Guide

Whisper the word Africa and feel every cell in your body resonate. Say Africa, and hear distant rhythms rise from deep within. Shout Africa! And feel the shackles and restraints that bind the modern spirit explode. Sing Af-ri-ca! and feel your feet move, stirring up the Serengeti dust which resides in your very DNA. The footprints of our ancestors can all be traced back to this place; there is a little bit of Africa in us all.

Welcome to a mind-bendingly vast continent whose contrasts and colours make a mockery of all known superlatives. Mt Kilimanjaro; The Nile; The Sahara; The Congo; all loom as large in the human imagination as the moon and stars. Through children's books and animations, Africa's astonishing natural history is imprinted into our consciousness from birth. As we grow, her heroes - from Shaka Zulu to Nelson Mandela - have become our own.

But to know Africa, to truly feel it, you need to go. Leave behind the media stereotypes of a basket-case continent ravaged by war, famine and disease. Africa today is mostly a land brimming with vitality and optimism. And don't believe for a second that African adventures are limited to jungle safaris and game parks. Africa offers travellers a palate of choices that other destinations can only dream about; from gleaming metropolises to the pastel patchworks of Morocco's medinas, from azure coastlines to the shifting shades of the desert's sands. In Africa you will experience a connectedness that defies logic; to hear the roar of Victoria Falls is to hear your own life-force surging through your veins, to stand before a rising sun on the great plains of Kenya and Tanzania is to feel the Lion King that resides within us all.

Other places lock away their culture in museums, in Africa you'll find it alive in the streets, in the markets, in the costumes of the people, in the way they move. Each of Africa's 53 countries gyrates to its own distinct soundtrack; this is, after all, where modern music has its roots. And yours are here too. So sing it again, Af-ri-ca!, and allow your spirit to lead you to the homecoming of a lifetime!