Fun with Maps - North Africa

 Casablanca, Marrakesh, Algiers, the Barbary Coast, Morocco, the Sahara Desert, Darfur, Benghazi, Tunisia, Tripoli.

You've seen these exotic locales in movies, TV shows and the news but do you know where they are or much about them? In this episode of Fun with Maps, host Dan Hanson looks at North Africa.

Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent and contains 54 fully recognized sovereign states (countries). This first episode in a series covering Africa includes Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco (including Western Sahara), Tunisia and Sudan.

After watching you will never listen to Bob Dylan, Crosby Stills and Nash or even the US Marines Hymn the same.

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Fun with Maps - Madagascar

 In this episode of Fun with Maps, host Dan Hanson looks at what has been called the 8th continent – Madagascar.

Map of Africa highlighting Madagascar

The map shows how isolated Madagascar is from the rest of the world and that makes it a hotbed of biodiversity - 90% of its wildlife is found nowhere else on Earth.  It has varieties of plants and animals that do not exist anywhere else.  

Lemur

You’ve probably seen lemurs (endemic to Madagascar) but there are thousands of other unique animals and plants such as the fossa, chameleon, the baobab tree and more.

Dan also shows a quick look at the Spiny Desert of Madagascar exhibit in the Cleveland Botanical Garden. 

Cleveland Botanical Garden - The Spiny Desert of Madagascar

Madagascar is such a unique area and host Dan Hanson had a lot of fun with this map. 

Watch the video below.

More Fun with Maps

Where in the world is Ethiopia?

When I spoke at the ClevelandPeople.Com Food Adventurers event at the Ethiopian Restaurant Zoma in Cleveland Heights Ohio  several people asked "Where in the world is Ethiopia?"

I showed that Ethiopia is in the Horn of Africa (East Africa about 2/3rds of the way up) and how the geography is important to the politics and history.

I also told of how the Nile River flows South to North and is split, how Ethiopia is the originator of coffee and about the languages (Amharic and others) and religions (Orthodox Christian and Muslim) of Ethiopia.

Watch this short video of Dan's answers about Ethiopia.

More from the Passport Adventure to Ethiopia