Africa from above reveals world-unique settings
The Okavango Delta and Victoria Falls should be seen from above, to augment as much time on the ground you can spend at them.
By all means see Africa by air. Unless your seat aloft takes the place of a sniffer dog.
Just kidding!
This dog looks like it knows where to bite someone who dared sit on its seat.
Leave the anti-poaching air drops to the Sheldrick Trust and other wildlife protectors. But if offered a seat in another plane, helicopter, ultralight or balloon over Africa, take it.
Our visit to the Serengeti Plain was too short to consider a balloon flight. I also passed on the Namib Desert, where sightseeing planes fly over the vast dune fields, because the Walvis Bay airport was a good distance from Swakopmund where we stayed.
But I was able to get in the sky over Zimbabwe’s Victoria Falls in a four-passenger helicopter and Botswana’s Okavango Delta in a four-passenger plane. Wow to both.
Much of the rest of the Nairobi-Kampala-Dar es Salam-Harare-Swakopmund-Cape Town route was less scenic, landscape wise. East and southern Africa are not the U.S. West on the landscape meter.
The Great Rift Valley, Nile River, Lake Victoria, Maasai Mara, Serengeti, Zanzibar, Lake Malawi, Etosha, Skeleton Coast are underwhelming from a landscape perspective, for visitors from western North America. (I know, passing through relatively quickly doesn’t give time for a full appreciation.)
There is no Banff, Glacier, Yosemite or Grand Teton National Park in Africa. Some visitors compare Namibia’s Fish River Canyon to Arizona’s Grand Canyon, but to them I say better look at Grand Canyon again.
Rather, Africa is so stunning and, in my book, the best continent to visit because of the wildlife, the people and because it’s Africa, dimwit! Who cares if the Serengeti looks like eastern Montana (with a million wildebeest)?
Africa will tug at your heart, being the ancestral home of all humans.
Even the Okavango Delta and Victoria Falls are bland in their own ways, being flat, featureless landscapes before revealing two unique spots on the globe: the world’s biggest inland delta and one of the world’s two biggest waterfalls.
Now, the coast of South Africa, Ethiopia and Morocco have gorgeous landscapes, but the overland Nairobi to Cape Town route has only a few other landscape stunners: Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania, Chimanimani Highlands in eastern Zimbabwe (and other wild looking ranges getting there from the north) and Chobe National Park in Botswana. (The Virunga volcanoes of Rwanda should be on the list, but I was recovering from a visit with the mountain gorillas and was unable to leave town to see them.)
I wouldn’t take Kilimanjaro over Washington’s Mount Rainier in the beauty department, and wouldn’t trade Namibia for southern Utah.
So take a look at Africa from above. Air tours aren’t wildly expensive ($80 for the Okavango plane) and ($225 for the Victoria Falls helicopter). See if it’s to your liking.