Africa: news, stories, and travel reviews

Submit a travel story

How to Hunt a Lion

(As told by Moses, a Maasai tribesman.)

After two years of invitations, I finally made it to Africa to visit my friend Moses, a Maasai elder, at his village in Kenya. That first night, while sitting around a fire, he offered to ...

Benin, West Africa: Begging for an Education

In the first century A.D. a Christian mystic named Augustine said, "The world is a book, and those who do not travel read but the first page." Those words have guided a great deal of ...

On Safari in Lake Manyara National Park

Three turns into the park, our Land Rover was forced to a stop as two large bull elephants sauntered across the road. Their tusks protruding forward, as if they were divining rods steering them into ...

Cairo, Post-Revolution

Cairo, Egypt, is a riveting blend of ancient and modern. I was apprehensive traveling here, though, because of reports of lingering unrest in Cairo after the country’s recent revolution. Yet I found the Egyptian people ...

Canary Islands Getaway

This island chain off the coast of Morocco is worth a visit.

While living and working in Europe, I traveled extensively during my time off. I took a lady friend along to the Canary Islands one year, where we spent two weeks in bliss. Although it was ...

Ethiopian Time Travel

The Omo River empties into Lake Turkana, not far from where Ethiopia, South Sudan and Kenya come together. The river valley is difficult to reach; from Addis Ababa the road trip takes the better part ...

Tarangire National Park, Tanzania

Tarangire National Park is probably the least visited of the northern Tanzanian game parks and retains a real air of undiscovered Africa. The park is famous for its huge number of elephants, baobab trees and ...

The Big 5 in Ngorongoro Crater, Tanzania

The Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA) in Tanzania includes the Ngorongoro Crater, covering 8,300 square kilometers and the only place on earth where mankind and wild animals co-exist in harmony. This uniqueness earned it a UNESCO ...

Captivating Cape Verde: Locked in an African Wine Bar

I’m sitting in an African bar scratching a description of Praia, Cape Verde, into a notebook, sipping my third cup of passable Portuguese plonk. I don't know if it was my intense concentration on the ...

The Cape, South Africa

South Africa is becoming a destination of choice for good reason. We were happy to arrive in Cape Town, the mother city, after a very long flight: 24 hours across two continents on South African ...

Climbing Jbel Toubkal: Morocco

Toubkal’s name translates to “big” in Arabic, and at 4,167 meters (13,671 feet), it’s the highest peak in the Atlas Mountains and Northern Africa in general. Since the mountain is 70 kilometers from Marrakech, my ...

Tofo, Mozambique

I was lying on Tofo Beach in Mozambique with my shirt shielding my face from the sun when I heard the distinct plop of a human sitting down next to me. I peeked from underneath ...

Bargaining in Cairo

"For you," the merchant murmured, "three hundred Egyptian pounds." I guffawed. Three hundred pounds? For a little wooden lute? I wanted the rababah, to hang on my wall back home, but I wasn't about to ...

Lesotho, Africa

There's a hole in the map of South Africa. That hole is a separate little country, Lesotho, which is where I was riding a horse when it started to hail. As I lowered my head, ...

Egypt (Cairo, Giza, Luxor)

Camels, pyramids and mummies, oh my! This ancient civilization features some of the most famous attractions in the world. Consider these tips from my itinerary and you’ll be walking like an Egyptian in no time. ...