Why are African sunsets so beautiful?
I don’t know. They simply are. This Mary Balogh quote comes close to an answer:
“And yet day and night meet fleetingly at twilight and dawn,” he said, lowering his voice again and narrowing his eyes and moving his head a quarter of an inch closer to hers. “And their merging sometimes affords the beholder the most enchanted moments of all the twenty-four hours. A sunrise or sunset can be ablaze with brilliance and arouse all the passion, all the yearning, in the soul of the beholder.”
― Mary Balogh, A Summer to Remember
Could there be anything more serene than the quiet beauty of an African sunset? Watch, as the sun dips below the horizon, and absorb the breath-taking technicolour liquid hues of ginger and amber intermingled with vibrant purples and slashed with burgundy red and ruby. Sunsets are not just physical phenomena, they are spiritual ones, too – to the extent that they inspire confessions of love from the hardest of hearts and piercings of hope in the forlorn, nature’s soothing balm for battered, buffeted and bruised souls. Sunsets are God’s compassionate love letter to a fallen world, the sun’s fiery kiss to the night.’
For a truly spectacular African sunset, head to Tanzania, home of Mount Kilimanjaro and the Serengeti.
If you are on a safari and your timing is right, you might be fortunate enough to see a herd of languid elephants crossing by against a backdrop of the most spectacular sunset landscape you will have ever seen – bold, brilliant and rich, a crescendo of vibrant red hues bursting forth in a staggering brilliance that takes your breath away.
No African sunset is exactly the same, however, which makes them all the more exhilarating. The last time I was on the beach in Kenya (on honeymoon), for example, I noticed that the sunset hues were not as fiery as those in the scorching heat of, say, the Tanzanian wilderness. The colours were more muted, but no less spectacular – thin ribbons of soothing purples in a sky of liquid ochre, playfully chasing away the great golden orb in the sky, which duly obliged, illuminating a quivering path across the water before slipping away quietly into its mysterious abode. This was paradise, my brief glimpse of Eden, accentuated by the intoxicating fragrance of Kenya’s tropical flowers still lingering in the air, even from far away, and the sensual sway of the palm trees, exotic and magnificent.
To catch beautiful countries, the following other countries will not disappoint: Mauritius, Seychelles, Madagascar, Rwanda, Botswana and Mozambique are renowned for their spectacular sunsets. Here’s what to look forward to in Madagascar, for example:
I find the sunsets where I live to be quite different from African sunsets. Although undoubtedly pretty, I find them to be less ‘exciting’. Here, sunsets are more mellow, predominantly of bronze and mustard tones with hues of crimson in an accommodating sky. But beauty is in the eye of the beholder and my eye is that of an African.
When was the last time you saw a particularly stunning sunset, and where was it? What made it so magical? Let’s have a conversation below.
