Mount Kilimanjaro

Location: Tanzania

Few mountains offer the beauty and mystique of Kilimanjaro. Standing at 19,340 feet, it is the highest mountain in Africa, dwarfing the region's other peaks.

It rises majestically from an otherwise featureless part of the East African plateau, side by side with the smaller Mount Meru. Both mountains are extinct volcanoes, with Kilimanjaro actually being the agglomeration of three distinct volcanoes, whose violent creation is associated with the creation of the Great Rift Valley, 60 miles to the West.

Kilimanjaro stands just 205 miles south of the equator, on the northern boundary of Tanzania. Its location on an open plain close to the Indian Ocean, and its great size and height strongly influence the climate, vegetation and animal life. Its ecology varies from hot savanna at its base, through forests, heath and moorland, highland desert to the frigid and barren summit at its three and a half mile high peak.