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My Big Five
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Edition 24: Summer 2003
Television presenter Kate Humble takes us to her five favourite places in Africa.
1. Lion's Head, Cape Town, South Africa
Just to the right of Table Mountain is a pinnacle on a long, sweeping hill which looks like a sleeping lion. This is Lion's Head. The walk to the summit takes you in a spiral of ever-changing views across the mountains, the beaches, the sea and the city, with the earthy, herbal smell of proteas in your nostrils. A final scramble over bare rock brings you to the top. Standing there, looking out over the mountains known as the Twelve Apostles and the coast curling away towards Cape Point, never fails to make me smile.
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2.The Red Sea
The Red Sea has over 6% of the world's coral reefs and, with warm water and generally good visibility, it is heaven on earth for scuba divers like me. If I had to pick one site, I'd say Elphinstone, where I saw my first shark (a black-tipped reef shark) and had an encounter with a giant Napoleon wrasse, a fish a good deal bigger than me. But it is the sheer quantity, variety and colour of the corals that make this such a spectacular site - one I would happily dive again and again.
3.Tsingy de Bemaraha, Madagascar
There is nowhere on earth like the Tsingy de Bemaraha. Plant life and erosion have joined forces to create a giant limestone forest of pinnacles, caverns and narrow, twisting canyons probed by ghostly aerial roots. These belong to plants and trees which you won't see anywhere else on the planet. Then there are the birds and the tantalising possibilities of spotting a lemur. It took me nine days to get there by road, river and on foot. It would have been worth travelling for ninety.
4.Etosha National Park, Namibia
It's difficult to single out one part of Namibia when the whole country is so spectacular, but I have never seen game in such concentrations as in Etosha. Huge herds of antelope, zebra and giraffe stood shimmering in the heat haze on the pan and there seemed to be lion everywhere. Floodlit waterholes at the camps made for memorable encounters at night and allowed me to see a black rhino with calf for the first time. Elephants walked past the car an arm's length away. It was magical.
5.The Sahara, Mali
Savagely beautiful, the Sahara has the magnetic draw of the wild and untameable. I spent five weeks travelling on foot and by camel with Mali's salt traders, who can read the desert like a detailed road map. Their land can be vicious and unpredictable, but never monotonous. It made me feel small and insignificant, but incredibly alive. Everyone should be allowed, just once, to fall asleep in warm sand with a million stars overhead. |
