Adventure Big Five

Seventeen days from Cape Town to Victoria Falls across four countries, through the Namib, the Kalahari and the Okavango. This is the most ambitious trip the operator runs in Africa and the landscapes change completely every few days.

Citrusdal opens it through the Northern Cape, which in late winter carries one of the great wildflower displays on earth, then Springbok and Fish River Canyon, the second largest canyon in the world after the Grand Canyon. Keetmanshoop and Mariental follow into Namibia, and then a rest day at Sossusvlei, where red dunes three hundred metres high meet a dry clay pan.

Swakopmund comes next on the Atlantic, a town of German colonial architecture squeezed between the desert and a cold sea, then Windhoek. The Kalahari follows, long-time home of the San, and then the Okavango Delta, the largest inland river delta in the world, where a river that never reaches the ocean spreads into a maze of channels. Chobe National Park in Botswana carries one of Africa’s densest elephant populations, though as ever what a given drive turns up is a matter of chance, and the trip finishes at Victoria Falls.

Edelweiss include a choice of BMW motorcycle, sixteen nights across comfortable hotels and safari lodges, a guide and a tour book. Flights are separate, between Cape Town and Victoria Falls in whichever direction the departure runs. Prices run from 9,400 to 9,910 euros per person for 2026. The distances are long and much of the riding is on gravel, so this is a trip for riders with some experience of both.