Africa's Protected Rock, Desert and Volcano, From the Sahara to the Indian Ocean Islands

In the Algerian Sahara, Tassili n'Ajjer protects a sandstone massif with more than 15,000 engravings and paintings spanning roughly 12,000 years, along with nearly 300 natural rock arches and endangered Saharan cypress trees. It was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1982.

Next to the south in Niger, this reserve covers about 77,360 square kilometers of the Air Mountains and the western edge of the Ténéré desert, making it the second-largest nature reserve in Africa. Sahelian wildlife survives here isolated inside a Saharan setting, and the site was placed on the List of World Heritage in Danger in 1992, the year after its inscription.

In Ethiopia, about 225 kilometers east of Addis Ababa, Awash National Park combines acacia woodland and the Awash River gorges with Mount Fentale, a dormant stratovolcano rising to 2,007 meters, and the hot springs at Filwoha set among palm groves.

The Tanzanian park covers 1,688 square kilometers and includes all of Mount Kilimanjaro above the tree line plus the montane forest belt above 1,820 meters. It was established in 1973, declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987 and named one of the Seven Natural Wonders of Africa in 2013.

Established in 1971 in northwest Namibia, this park covers 16,845 square kilometers of some of the most inaccessible shores in the world, dotted with shipwrecks. Its southern section admits four wheel drive vehicles as far as the Ugab River gate, while the northern section is reached only by fly in safari and is closed to all vehicles.

Running roughly 600 kilometers along Namibia's Atlantic coast, the park protects part of the Namib Desert and the Naukluft range. Its best known feature is Sossusvlei, a clay pan ringed by dunes rising more than 300 meters, and its origin goes back to a 1907 German colonial game reserve.

Crossing to Madagascar, this reserve protects a karst limestone landscape of needle sharp pinnacles called tsingy, whose local name is generally translated as the place where one cannot walk barefoot. UNESCO inscribed it as a World Heritage Site in 1990, and its northern section keeps strict nature reserve status.

Established on 5 March 2007, this park covers more than 75 percent of the French island of Reunion with its core and buffer zones. It includes the volcano Piton des Neiges, above 3,000 meters, and the still-active Piton de la Fournaise, and it supports 230 endemic plant species.

The path ends on Praslin in the Seychelles, where 19.5 hectares of palm forest shelter the coco de mer, whose double-lobed nut, the largest seed of any plant, can weigh up to 42 kilograms. The Vallée de Mai became a nature reserve in 1966 and a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1983.