Africa
18 curated road trips
- Great East RoadDrive the Great East Road from Lusaka through the Luangwa Valley to South Luangwa National Park, one of Africa's finest wildlife sanctuaries and the birthplace of the walking safari.
- Clarence DriveThe R44 between Gordon's Bay and Hermanus hugs the Kogelberg coastline, mountain cliffs plunging to turquoise sea, fynbos slopes, penguin colonies, and the world's finest shore-based whale watching.
- Panorama RouteMpumalanga's Panorama Route strings together the most dramatic escarpment scenery in Southern Africa, canyon viewpoints, gold-rush villages, ancient potholes, and waterfalls spilling off the edge of the highveld.
- Kalahari Desert DriveCross the world's largest sand system from Gaborone west to the Central Kalahari, red dunes, black-maned lions, meerkats at sunrise, and skies so dark the Milky Way casts shadows on the sand.
- Sani PassA boulder-strewn 4WD track climbing 1332 vertical metres in 9km through the Drakensberg escarpment into the mountain kingdom of Lesotho. At the top: the highest pub in Africa, a blanket of stars, and a Basotho world entirely apart.
- Namaqualand Flower RouteFor two weeks each August, the Namaqualand desert transforms into the greatest wildflower spectacle on Earth, millions of orange, yellow, and white daisies covering the Bokkeveld and Knersvlakte as far as the eye can see.
- Route 62The longest wine route in the world winds through the Breede River Valley and Little Karoo, past fruit farms, ostrich ranches, and the Swartberg Mountains, connecting Cape winelands to the edge of the great Karoo.
- Namib Desert CircuitThe world's oldest desert, 55 million years, and its most photogenic. Sossusvlei's 300m apricot dunes, the bleached bones of Deadvlei, the Skeleton Coast's shipwrecks, and Fish River Canyon's billion-year-old gorge.
- Etosha Pan CircuitA vast white salt pan, 120km across, visible from space, ringed by waterholes where lions, elephants, and black rhinos gather in the dry season. The Etosha circuit is Africa's most accessible concentrated wildlife driving, all on good gravel roads.
- Makgadikgadi PansThe remnant of an ancient mega-lake larger than Switzerland, two vast salt pans at the Kalahari's heart. In the dry season: meerkats and brown hyena. In January: a quarter-million zebra on the world's second-largest migration.
- Chapman's Peak DriveLess than 10 km long but with 114 curves and breathtaking views of Hout Bay and the Sentinel, affectionately known as "Chappies," this toll road was originally built during World War I, blasted from the sheer face of the 593 m Chapman's Peak above the Atlantic Ocean. A steep cliffside drive with natural canopy overhangs, the views are unbeatable on a sunny day.
- B9 Road, MauritiusSkirting the Indian Ocean-facing Mauritius shoreline from Le Morne Brabant, a UNESCO World Heritage monolith with a poignant memorial to escaped slaves, east past Macondé Rock's viewpoint, Saint Martin, Bel Ombre, and the island's finest beaches at St Félix, Riambel, and Gris Gris to Souillac.
- Skeleton CoastThe C34 salt-and-gravel coastal road from Swakopmund north along Namibia's Atlantic fringe to Terrace Bay, through the Skeleton Coast National Park, past bleached whale bones, shipwrecks, and Cape Cross Seal Reserve's 100,000-strong fur seal colony. Ultra-desolate. Motorbikes not permitted on the coast road.
- Madagascar Baobab RouteThrough Madagascar's central highlands and western lowlands to the Avenue of the Baobabs, 800-year-old bottle-shaped giants lining a red laterite track near Morondava. Past highland rice terraces, zebu cart markets, sacred forests, and the canal du Pangalanes to one of the most otherworldly landscapes on earth.
- Durban to the DrakensbergFrom Durban's Indian Ocean beachfront west into the Drakensberg, the Barrier of Spears, through the Zulu heartlands, the Midlands Meander of cheese farms and craft studios, the Cathedral Peak wilderness, and up the legendary Sani Pass to Lesotho, the mountain kingdom in the clouds at 2,874 metres.
- Tunisia: Medinas to SaharaTunisia's extraordinary cultural loop, Sidi Bou Said's Andalusian whitewash, the medinas of Tunis and Kairouan (the fourth holiest city in Islam), the Roman amphitheatre at El Djem, the Star Wars landscapes of Matmata's troglodyte houses, and the Saharan dunes of Douz. North Africa's most accessible and diverse drive.
- Across the High AtlasFrom the rose-red walls of Marrakech over the spine of the Atlas Mountains via the 2,260m Tizi n'Tichka pass, past kasbahs of red pisé, across the hammada plateau to Ouarzazate's film sets, through the Draa Valley's 40 km of palm groves, and into the Sahara at Merzouga's towering Erg Chebbi dunes. The great desert approach.
- Cape Town & Garden RouteSouth Africa's most celebrated road trip, from Cape Town's two-ocean peninsula along the Garden Route's coastal forest to Storms River. Chapman's Peak Drive, the whale nursery of Hermanus, the lagoon town of Knysna, the Tsitsikamma forest's 800-year-old yellowwood trees, and the Bloukrans Bridge bungee jump (the world's highest) are strung along a coast of extraordinary biodiversity.