Belle Mare Plage Resort - Mauritius

Mauritius, discovered by Portuguese explorers in the late 1400s, is a tropical green paradise that lies 1,200 miles off the coast of southern Africa, out beyond Madagascar, in the middle of the Indian Ocean. There are four 18-hole courses on the island, with the venerable Gymkhana Club at Vacoas having been built by and for the British army back in 1902. There are also five nine-hole courses, with more golf on the way. The Belle Mare Plage Resort, 45 minutes from the capital of Port Louis on the east coast, is home to both the Legend Course designed by South African professional Hugh Baiocchi and opened in 1994, and the Links Course designed by Peter Alliss and Rodney Wright, which opened in 2003. The Legend, home to the Mauritius Open each December, features holes carved from volcanic rock and running along the lagoon of the coastal lowland plain, with native Javanese deer flitting across the f.1irways. Four holes on the front nine of the Links Course slither around the lagoon, while the back nine takes advantage of the rolling, wooded site. Mauritius was named by the Dutch, who claimed it in 1598, before it passed to the French in the early 1700s, while the British held the island from 1814 to 1968 and introduced golf.

Elephant Hills Golf Course - Zimbabwe

There are many fine courses in Zimbabwe, the former Rhodesia, dating back. to Bulawayo Golf Club founded in 1895, followed by Salisbury Golf Club, now Royal Salisbury, founded in 1899. The Elephant Hills Golf Course in Victoria Falls, opened in 1970, is two miles upstream on the Zambezi River from the fabled falls. Indeed, the plumes of spray can be seen from the balconies of the adjoining 276-room Elephant Hills Inter-Continental Hotel. The Gary Player-designed course cuts through the broad plain of bush with fairways frequented by grazing antelope and gaggles of baboons. The Scottish explorer David Livingstone became the first European to witness Victoria Falls on his excursion down the Zambezi in 1855, writing that "scenes so lovely must have been gazed upon by angels in their flight."