Africaisn’t one place.

Cameroon

Six ecological zones in nine hundred kilometres: an active 4,095 m volcano, Atlantic black sand, Korup rainforest, the Grassfields kingdoms and the Sahel edge at Waza.

Dry from November to February in the south; the north stays dry into April.

Walk out of it into Nigeria, Chad, Equatorial Guinea, Central African Republic, Gabon and Congo.

Benin

Ouidah is the source of vodun and a departure point of the Atlantic slave trade, Abomey holds the earthen palaces of the kings of Dahomey, and Ganvie is a town of thirty thousand people on stilts in a lagoon.

November to February, the main dry season. The Vodun festival is on 10 January.

Walk out of it into Togo, Niger, Burkina Faso and Nigeria.

Uganda

Half the world's mountain gorillas, the source of the Nile, the Rwenzori snowline on the equator and savanna parks within a day's drive of each other.

Two dry seasons. Gorilla trekking is easiest June to September.

Walk out of it into DR Congo, Rwanda, Kenya, Tanzania and South Sudan.

Burundi

A country of hills above Lake Tanganyika, with the drummers of Gishora on the UNESCO list, chimpanzees at Kibira, and a marker at Rutovu on the ridge where the Nile's longest tributary begins.

The long dry season, June to September.

Walk out of it into Tanzania, DR Congo and Rwanda.

Namibia

The oldest desert on earth running into the Atlantic — Sossusvlei's dunes, the Skeleton Coast, Etosha's waterholes and Damaraland's desert elephant, across a country with almost nobody in it.

The dry winter concentrates game at the waterholes and keeps the roads open.

Walk out of it into Zimbabwe, Zambia, South Africa, Botswana and Angola.

Angola

Kalandula is one of the largest waterfalls in Africa by volume, the Namib runs up the whole southern coast to the Iona dunes, and Luanda's bay is closed by a sand spit with the Atlantic on the other side of it.

The cacimbo, May to September — dry and cooler, and the roads are passable.

Walk out of it into DR Congo, Congo, Namibia and Zambia.

Algeria

Four-fifths Sahara, a Mediterranean coast of Roman cities, and the Hoggar and Tassili massifs in the deep south — rock art nine thousand years old on a plateau the size of Britain.

October to April. The Sahara is unvisitable in summer and the Tassili needs cool nights.

Walk out of it into Mauritania, Morocco, Libya, Mali, Niger and Tunisia.

Egypt

The oldest continuous tourism in the world, and still the reason most people first think of Africa — the Giza plateau, the Valley of the Kings, Abu Simbel, and the Red Sea reefs on the other coast.

The cool half of the year. Upper Egypt in August is not a holiday.

Walk out of it into Libya and Sudan.

Libya

The best-preserved Roman city on the Mediterranean, Greek Cyrene on its escarpment, and the Ubari lakes in a sand sea — a country whose archaeology is world-class and whose access is not simple.

Late autumn to early spring. Check what your government says before you plan anything.

Walk out of it into Algeria, Sudan, Egypt, Niger, Tunisia and Chad.

Cabo Verde

Ten Atlantic islands six hundred kilometres off Senegal: Fogo is an active volcano with vineyards inside the caldera, Santo Antao is cut into ribeiras you walk down, and the morna that Cesaria Evora sang is on the UNESCO list.

November to May. The wind for kitesurfing on Sal and Boa Vista is strongest from December to March.

Comoros

Karthala is one of the most active volcanoes in the world with a crater four kilometres across, the coelacanth was found alive off these islands after eighty million years, and Moroni's stone town is the least visited Swahili port on the coast.

May to October, the dry season. Cyclones are possible from December to March.

Madagascar

Separated from Africa 160 million years ago, with ninety per cent of its wildlife found nowhere else — lemurs, baobabs, the spiny forest of the south, and rainforest along the eastern escarpment.

After the cyclone season, April to November, with whales in July and August.