Old Fashioned Paper Maps of Africa and Everywhere?
 

maps
 

check out t4a. tracks 4 africa
good luck on your trip
kp

maps 4 you
O S maps plenty of map sorces available

Michelin maps numbers 953, 954 and 955 cover the entire continent and are excellent.

I bought paper maps of most every country I went to - I like them ;-)

Mostly I searched amazon and also Stanfords the good map shop in central London, UK. stanfords.co.uk

I then had a guide book from Bradt for each country - they are the best for Africa generally, but also have good maps from the authors, these were often the best maps for local areas: Bradt Travel Guides - you can order them from a distributer in south Africa as well...

Then get tracks for africa on your gps, along with the free world mapping thing as they cover big cities in far too much detail. Welcome to Tracks4Africa

For South Africa and Namibia, you can buy good maps down there…

Good luck, and happy map porn ;-)

Hey Clay how u doing ?
Have decided if u going through Africa, and if so when u planning to leave?
I will be in Morocco on 1st of Feb then down along the west coast.
Cheers JC

Stanfords.co.uk is a good source.

Someone recommended me Reise-Know-How Verlag / Rough Guide Maps (apparently the same thing, though the latter are twice the price).

I want to buy maps for Chile, Argentina, and Peru, but not sure -- National Geographic maps go for around 6 quid each on Amazon --

Has anyone had any experiences of them? I'll probably just go for the Reise maps, unless someone can recommend the NatGeo ones.

Cheers,

RTW

No one map series was good for every country, and paper maps of Africa are pretty old and somewhat useless, even before the Chinese started building roads in the last 10 years. But nice to have and useful to a point...

So mix and match gps/digital/online with paper…

Reise-Know-How are good because they are made from a tough wax type paper if I remember correctly… And being German they perhaps have more care and attention going in to their accuracy…..??

I'm a fan of Reise-Know-How maps. I have a full set for all of South America. They even have some roads on them that are not on any gps maps. Water and tear proof. In addition to them there is a route atlas in Argentina called Atlas de Rutas Firestone. It's updated every year and it is excellent.

In my experience, these are all maps you'll ever need for Africa. The more detailed maps are most often inaccurate or plain wrong in the places where you would need the detail. Where you don't need it, the Michelin maps will do fine. The only downside is that they're not very robust, but then nothing is perfect.

I like the Reiseknowhow maps for the material they are made of, but for Africa they were often wrong or had no info, giving no additional benefit to the Michelin maps for me. For Africa,I wouldnt buy them again.

If you desperately need more detail somewhere, T4A is the way to go.

Just to add a little more info T4a have just issued 2 new books Travellers guide to Namibia and the guide to Botswana. They look brilliant and the info is all up to date. I have been reliably informed straight from the horses mouth that they are going to be available from Stanfords as are their paper maps. Having looked at the pdf's on their web site the new books are a match if not superior to the Brandt series.

For me, you need to mix and match different maps by different countries. If your going to do a shorter trip mostly visiting the main 'sites' then Michelin is ok. If you'd like to explore each country in detail then researching the best paper maps for each country and combining it with GPS info and Bradt is the way to go, for me anyway.

Don't forget the excellent OSM gps maps as well...

Paper maps are fun for me anyway - nice to get it out the night before and look at possibilities on a big sheet. With paper one your can draw on the tracks from your gps.

I agree, and I tried that, but couldnt find any maps that would give me sufficient extra detail/accuracy to be worth buying and carrying. Amongst others I had the Reise maps for Egypt, Kenia and Tanzania, as well as having looked at a few others, but I ended up preferring the Michelin. Maybe I didnt look hard enough to find the best map for each country.

As to giudebooks, I cant say, as I never use them. Much more fun finding things out on the way, talking to locals, etc.