Africa

Africa is the second largest continent, with 54 countries and a surface area of 30,244,050 km sq.

Regions

North Africa - coloured in red - the countries that rim the southern shores of the Mediterranean Sea.
Saharan Africa - coloured in blue - the mostly desert and often landlocked nations that span the Sahara Desert.
West Africa - coloured in green - the tropical Atlantic coastal nations.
Central Africa - coloured in purple - the heart of Africa.
East Africa - coloured in orange - the nations that border the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean.
Southern Africa - coloured in turquoise - nations at Africa's southern tip.

Countries

Other territories

Get around

By thumb

Many locals hitchhike in countries throughout Africa, often paying a small fee to the driver. It is best to check the political and social climate of each region before traveling.

In the whole of Africa it is possible to flag down cars pay them a required fee and get a lift in return. That is just the way public transport works in that part of the world -who has a means of transportation, that is a car is automatically expected to give lifts to others and of course charge them a small amount of money for the favour. The idea of it has nothing to do with our Western idea of hitchhiking.

If you are of European descent it may sometimes work that by waiting alongside a road where bush taxis also go that you can stop a NGO driver, tourists or someone rich in their mercedes and thereby go quicker and free of charge, but there are so little of these around that this is not something you can usually bank on.

See

Many visitors are attracted by the African flora and fauna and several countries benefit from Safari tourism to African National Parks.

Amboseli National Park is located in Kenya and famous for the biggest tuskers in the world.
Kgalagadi Transfontier Park is located in South Africa and Botswana
Masai Mara is located in Kenya and is famous for the mass migration of wildebeest from the Serengeti.
Tsavo National Park is located in Kenya and is best known for its giraffe population.
Serengeti National Park is located in Tanzania and has amazing opportunities for seeing lions.
Etosha National Park is located in Namibia.
Kruger National Park in South Africa is the biggest national park in Africa.

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The authors of this document are Anonymous user(s) of Wikitravel, Evan Prodromou, Felix Gottwald, Peter Donaghy, Yann Forget and the following WikiTravel users: Akubra, Dhum_Dhum, Guaka, InterLangBot, JensANDMarian, Jpatokal, Rmx, Yzerfontein, Xltel. The original version of this article can be seen at http://wikitravel.org/en/Africa.