On the shores of the Atlantic Ocean in south-western Africa, Angola is a large, developing country that borders Zambia, Namibia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Congo. Largely closed off for the last few years, it’s an almost mythical destination and one of the continent’s most diverse. Here, the landscapes range from beautiful beaches on the coast and pristine tracts of miombo woodland and open floodplains in the southeast, to highland plateaus, jungles and vast lakes and rivers.

A safari to Angola is not about seeing the Big Five. It’s a conservation journey through raw Africa where nothing is premeditated or orchestrated. The country is one of Africa’s most remote and little-known wilderness areas and the future of some of the most iconic wildlife areas, the Okavango Delta and the Lower Zambezi in particular, depends on the Angolan Highlands and what is done to protect them as the country rapidly industrializes, post-civil war.

Visit Angola and you will be one of the very first people to explore vast swathes of genuine wilderness countryside, populated only by small numbers of indigenous people who have been cut off from the world for almost half a century. Many of them have never been visited by anyone outside of Angola, besides a few hardy scientists and explorers these past few years.