Bay Area Travel Guide

Duba, Botswana
What is so unusual about Duba is that these lions hunt by day – most prides throughout the continent hunt at night – and so visitors to Duba can watch marvelous set pieces as the lions and the buffalo take each other on in epic battles

Mundulea Reserve, Namibia
Covered in seemingly endless bush, the rugged hills and sparse plains of Mundulea Reserve may match a thousand corners of Africa, but it’s the exceptional resident guide and his vision of conservation that set it apart. A decade ago, Mundulea was four large cattle farms and things were very different.

Northern Kenya
Wild and vast, with the sort of huge horizons that reduce even the most hardened of bankers to tears. Up in Northern Kenya, right up against the Ethiopian border, far away from the fashionable animal-stuffed parks, you can find it. To wander through a land that is populated only by the indigenous peoples to whom it belongs, who live easily and naturally among all its inhabitants, the lion and the elephant as well as the goat and the cow, is to have a glimpse of how things once were and how perhaps they ought to be.

The Zambezi Valley, Zambia
There are few other places in Africa that feel as unspoiled as this valley, through which the sluggish Zambezi river flows past grassy floodplains and lush ravine forests beneath a soaring purple escarpment. This is not a park; it’s a wilderness that happens to have a sprinkling of rather comfortable camps and expert guides to bring comfort and knowledge to the experience: Chongwe (www.chongwe.com), with its romantic open-sided tented suites, or Chiawa (www.chiawa.com), with its passionate guides, or Sausage Tree (www.sausagetreecamp.com), with its perfectly positioned sunset cocktail deck. Best of all are the activities available, from walking with armed guides in the early morning to angling for tiger fish, canoeing, boating and spotting nocturnal creatures by torchlight. Or just sitting with a cold beer, listening to hyenas whoop in the hills at night.

Gorillas, Rwanda
Although poor, Rwanda is now stable. Its parliament is run by a majority of women, average incomes are rising fast, and laws actively promote reconciliation. Africa’s most densely populated country is prospering; in many ways it is a model of success. Tourism has played a vital role in re-energising the economy.

Kruger, South Africa
The southern part of Kruger is dominated by exclusive, expensive luxury lodges that provide haute cuisine, fine wines, excellent guides and a pretty good first-timer’s glance at the Big Five

Ruaha National Park, Tanzania
This is the Africa of long ago. Its beauty is of an altogether harsher kind. Its parched plains are littered with boulders and wherever you look there are grotesque baobabs as old as London. The land is painted in muted colors, but in the hour before sundown it glows like amber, and that is when you may see five male lions emerge from the long grass, one after another.

The Central Kalahari Game Reserve
In the Kalahari, you have to be aware of the small, the neglected, the unsung – the dung beetle and the snake, the African hare and the jackal. You learn to look out for the springbok, the ostrich and the gemsbok, and you get your thrills at night when you hear the roar of the black-mane Kalahari lion and the howl of the brown hyena, while up in the sky the stars are brighter and more extravagant than anywhere in the world. It doesn’t take long before you understand why Tom Hardbattle, a British policeman who arrived in what was then Bechuanaland after the war, declared: “Everything I ever wanted I found in the Kalahari.”