ALGERIA
CAMEL TREKING IN THE SAHARA
Peter Grubb, founder of outfitter ROW Adventures, once wandered into a French travel agency to buy a ticket to Morocco and unknowingly ended up with one to Algeria instead. It was a fine mistake, given the weeks of warm Saharan hospitality he enjoyed, and he's been yearning to return ever since. Next fall he does, this time to lead a new adventure into the lonely canyons and quiet oases of a North African nation seldom seen by Americans. For 21 days, travelers will journey by 4x4 to ancient settlements in palm-ringed valleys and hike with Tuareg guides in Tassili N'Ajjer National Park, an area nearly twice the size of Switzerland, with life-size pictographs and gnarled chasms. Then they'll spend five days trekking with camels through the red-sandstone villages of western Algeria's Sahara, where they'll pitch tents under unfettered skies, mingle with nomads, and devour lamb stew with flatbread baked in the sand. OUTFITTER: ROW Adventures; rowinternational.com PRICE: $5,990 DIFFICULTY: Moderate WHEN TO GO: October, January
BOTSWANA
ADVENTURE TOURS
Aspiring safari guides, take note. This nine-day educational foray into the wilds of the Okavango Delta—among antelopes, lions, giraffes, Cape buffalo, and zebras—will give participants a strong introduction to the finer points of African bushcraft and survival skills. You’ll be schooled by professional South African guiding instructors in four-wheel driving techniques, navigation, tracking, fire starting, canoe poling, food foraging, rifle handling, game spotting, and (optional) venomous-snake wrangling. Though your graduation certificate won’t qualify you as a professional guide, it will certainly look impressive on the wall of your den back home.Price: $2,700—$3,300 Outfitter: Explore Africa, 888-596-6377, www.exploreafrica.com When to Go: Year-round
BOTSWANA, NAMIBIA & ZAMBIA
SAFARI IN THE KALAHARI DESERT
Want to save on a safari? Go in the off-season. On Wilderness Safaris' new Summer Spectacular trip, guests visit iconic sites like Victoria Falls and Botswana's Okavango Delta while staying in camps where plunge pools come standard. But the draw is your first stop, the Kalahari Desert. In the wet summer, from November to April, areas like Deception Valley teem with herds of springbok, which come to drink standing water. Lions and cheetahs aren't far behind. Trips leave between December and April; 8 DAYS, FROM $3,850 wilderness-safaris.com.
SAFARI IN THE SERENGETI NATIONAL PARK
In 2007, Serengeti National Park officials rewrote their tourism plan to include walking safaris in select areas of the 5,700-square-mile savannah. Now, after several recon trips, luxury outfitter Mark Thornton Safaris is one of only three companies permitted to lead trips for up-close encounters with lions, buffalo, and elephants. (Yes, the guides carry rifles.) The three-to-six-day trips are usually added to longer tours of Tanzania, and begin each morning with a six-hour trek and end each night with sundowner drinks. All itineraries are customized. Departures between May and March; From $650 per person per day for a group of four, including transfers from the airport in Arusha; thorntonsafaris.com
SAFARI BY ELEPHANT
The trouble with most elephant-back safaris is that you never properly bond with your transportation. This issue is smartly resolved at the elegantly understated Abu Camp, in the Okavango Delta of the Kalahari Desert, where you live alongside eight resident elephants that roam the 395,000-acre reserve outside the six handsome platform tents. With assistance from the camp's wildlife experts and mahouts, spend four days and three nights interacting with the herd and riding them into the floodplains to graze undetected among zebras, wildebeests, giraffes, and impalas. At night, soak in the trill of some of the 500 species of birds while finishing off your five-star grub of sweet potato soup and harissa fish stir-fry by the campfire. Price: $6,270 Outfitter: Classic Africa, 888-227-8311, www.classicafrica.com
When to Go: May-October
KENYA
TREK THE GREAT WALK, TSAVO NATIONAL PARK
This 11-day, 110-mile Kenya journey is a walk in the park for trip leader Iain Allen, an honorary warden and seasoned adventurer who once trekked 300 miles from Mount Kilimanjaro to the Indian Ocean. You'll trace his steps along the wildlife-flush Tsavo and Galana rivers, tracking the Big Five (lion, leopard, buffalo, elephant, rhino) as you cross the 8,300-square-mile park from west to east. As for the carnivorous critters that are bound to catch your scent, Le Bon says, "They tend to walk away." The trek begins at Mzima Springs, a hippo hangout at the base of the Chyulu Range, 149 miles southeast of Nairobi. From there you'll follow the palm-fringed Tsavo River through giraffe and kudu habitat to your first campsite, at the base of the jagged Ngulia Mountains. After a nap beneath the down comforter in your plush safari tent, you'll be ready for an afternoon game drive and cocktails by the fire. In the next few days you'll track gazelles, impalas, and zebras en route to the park's more arid eastern side, where it's easy to spot hartebeest and fringe-eared oryx across the open plain. The journey ends with a night of pampering at the Hemingways Resort, a posh hotel on a white-sand stretch of Watamu Bay, where you can lounge by the swimming pool and ponder your epic feat. Price: $6,900 Outfitter: Mountain Travel Sobek, 888-687-6235, www.mtsobek.com When to Go: March, June, September
LIBYA
TREK CROSS-COUNTRY
On this 17-day expedition from Tripoli—one of the first outfitted trips to Libya since the travel ban for U.S. citizens was lifted last March—you'll take in all five of Libya's UNESCO World Heritage Sites, including the ruins of the Roman-walled cities of Sabratah and Leptis Magna; the labyrinthine 2,000-year-old mud-brick western border town of Ghadames, a key stop on the great trans-Saharan caravan routes; and the haunting, desolate Greek temples and tombs of Apollonia and Cyrenaica, on a bluff overlooking the sea. Along the way, you'll camp in the desert and sleep on beds carved out of rock in the below-ground troglodyte houses of Ruhaybat.Price: $4,750 and up Outfitter: Geographic Expeditions, 800-777-8183, www.geoex.com When to Go: April, September
MOROCCO
TREKING THE COUNTRYSIDE
Most travelers know Morocco for its colorful markets. But on KE Adventure Travel's new Peaks and Valleys of Jebel Sirwa trek, expansive views of the Atlas Mountains are the climax. You'll keep an easy pace on the six-day, 50-mile trek, leaving plenty of time to visit the semi-fortified villages of Berber farmers. By night, you'll camp in grazing pastures. At trip's end, scramble up 10,800-foot Jebel Sirwa, an extinct volcano offering stunning views of the High Atlas Mountains. Trips depart from Marrakesh in March, April, October, and November; $865; keadventure.com
MADAGASCAR
PADDLE DISCOVERY OF THE FOURTH LARGEST ISLAND ON EARTH
Long isolated from the flora and fauna of the African mainland, the world's fourth-largest island teems with evolutionary anomalies, such as the 30 lemur species and countless other miscellaneous critters that exist nowhere else on earth. You'll hear a cacophony of grunts and wails as you kayak the aquamarine water of the Indian Ocean through the newly designated Masoala National Park. Inland you'll paddle on calm rivers and lakes through forest reserves on this 18-day adventure. In the tropical home of indiris, sifakas, and octopus trees, you'll sleep in wilderness lodges and camp on palm-shaded beaches where you can snorkel in secluded lagoons few outsiders have seen. OUTFITTER: Explorers Corner, 510-559-8099, explorerscorner.com; PRICE: $4,553; DIFFICULTY: Moderate; WHEN TO GO: October–November
NAMIBIA
SAFARI THRU A CHEETAH CONSERVATION AREA
Though Africa's largest population of endangered cheetahs—about 3,000—lives in Namibia, their propensity to snack on livestock keeps them in jeopardy. You'll try to change that during this two-week safari, five days of which are spent working at the Cheetah Conservation Fund training Anatolian shepherd dogs, building fences, counting wildlife, and staying in a nearby farmhouse. On your first night in Namibia, take in the view from the 1914 castle of Count von Schwerin, where the wine collection is stored in a cellar carved out of a stone hillside. Later, you'll check out the black rhinos of Etosha National Park, the shipwreck-littered Skeleton Coast, and finally the Namib Desert. After a day of sand-surfing the 1,000-foot-high dunes, refuge is in a kulala, an open-air bungalow with rooftop stargazing. Price: $4,400
Outfitter: Mango African Safaris, 888-698-9220, www.mangosafari.com When to Go: July-August
SEYCHELLES
FLY-FISHING THE COSMOLEDO ISLANDS
When you encounter the foot-and-a-half-long coconut crabs that reside in the Cosmoledo Islands, 500 miles off the coast of Tanzania, give them a wide berth: Their pincers can lift up to 65 pounds and crack coconuts with diamond-cutting precision. Then again, you won't be spending much time inland on this outer subgroup of the Seychelles—the real action is casting in the turquoise flats surrounding the four atolls. The Cosmoledos, protected by a ten-mile-wide coral ring, have never been inhabited—they had their last documented brush with humanity in 1822, when British captain Fairfax Moresby came ashore during an Indian Ocean mapping expedition. This isolation has led to a freakish evolution of fish species, including the giant trevally, weighing in at 70 pounds. You'll spend six days casting over the crystal water and seven nights aboard a retired 1935 North Sea research vessel, complete with teak-and-brass-appointed saloon and dining room. Price: $6,000 Outfitter: FlyCastaway, 011-27-82-334-3448, www.flycastaway.com
When to Go: November-April
SOUTH AFRICA
ARCHAEOLOGICAL EXPEDITION
Jump into the hottest archaeological debate going—the true origin of man—with an exploration of the 3.2-million-year-old "Cradle of Humankind" sites at Sterkfontein and Swartkrans caves, 45 minutes north of Johannesburg. Led by the top archaeologists and paleontologists in the country, you'll spend 13 days poking around the gravesites of prehistoric Australopithecus africanus, from the limestone caves of Limpopo to the Knysna coastline, while bunking in wine-country estates and elegant hotels. You'll also check out the Big Five at Mthethomusha Game Reserve and the success at Addo Elephant National Park, where the pachyderm population has grown from 11 to 420 in the past 75 years.Price: $7,995 Outfitter: Crow Canyon Archaeological Center, 800-422-8975 ext. 146, www.crowcanyon.org When to Go: June
Fishing and Diving Adventure
This two-week coastal foray starts in South Africa's Maputaland Coastal Forest Reserve, where you'll spend five nights in one of Rocktail Bay Lodge's 11 stilted chalets, tucked behind forested dunes. Between surfcasting for kingfish and snorkeling amid a confetti swirl of subtropical fish, you'll view freshwater lake hippos and crocs and hit the beach at night to track nesting leatherback and loggerhead turtles. After a quick flight to Mozambique, you'll board a boat for Benguerra Island, just off the mainland in the Bazaruto Archipelago, and check in to the thatched bungalows of Benguerra Lodge. Here, scuba divers may encounter 50-foot whale sharks and endangered dugongs, and anglers will work some of the world's best marlin-fishing grounds. Price: $4,395 Outfitter: The Africa Adventure Company, 800-882-9453, www.africa-adventure.com When to Go: Year-round
TANZANIA
SAFARI THRU MASAILAND
In partnership with the Masai Environmental Resource Coalition, a network of Masai organizations advocating for tribal rights and sustainable use of the great ecosystems of East Africa, this 12-day safari-with-a-conscience combines classic game drives and walks with daily visits to local schools and villages—well off the usual tourist path. The journey begins in the wide, lion-rich plains of the Masai Mara Game Reserve, then heads to the important elephant migratory ground of Amboseli National Park, at the foot of 19,340-foot Kilimanjaro. Tanzania's rustic tented Sinya Camp, a private Masai concession in the acacia woodlands, is the final stop.
High Point: Searching for game on foot with a Masai warrior in the Sinya bushlands—littered by giant elephant dung. Low Point: Realizing that for many years the Masai have not reaped equitable benefits from the tourism trade. Travel Advisory: Don't expect your guides to drive off-road to get a better look at wild animals. It damages habitat, harasses wildlife, and is strictly prohibited on this trip. Price: $3,750 Outfitter: Wildland Adventures, 800-345-4453, www.wildland.com
When to Go: February, March, June to October, December
