Our safari holidays in Tanzania visit a vibrant and beautiful country with world-class parks. Safaris have been a way of life in Tanzania for decades; the country is blessed with the winning combination of both superb big game and stunning tropical beaches. You can fly from a Tanzania safari camp in the morning to an Indian Ocean beach for an afternoon swim.
Because the country is vast, it helps to think of Tanzania holidays falling into four broad areas: the famous ‘northern circuit’ safaris; the wild parks of southern Tanzania; the remote safaris of western Tanzania; and the beaches of the coast & islands. Tanzania’s three safari areas are very different; but all combine well with trips to the beach! Looking at each in more detail:
A Northern Tanzania Safari
Tanzania’s first safari areas were in the north, and this ‘northern circuit’ remains its most famous safari area. The Ngorongoro Crater and the Rift Valley’s Lake Manyara are names to conjure with – whilst the Serengeti’s great migration is one of the world’s great wildlife spectacles; no wonder it attracts hundreds of thousands of human visitors every year!
Sadly, sometimes the mini-buses out-number the animals here; you can find the side of mass tourism to Africa that we don’t like. Hence we’ve strived to find ways of visiting these areas, whilst avoiding the human hotspots. The main parks here are:
Ngorongoro Conservation Area
‘Tanzania’s greatest wildlife showpiece, the Ngorongoro Crater has breath-taking views, phenomenal game and a lot of visitors. Look out for elephants, buffalo and black rhino on the crater floor; the large lion population is far from camera shy
This package is our typical 5 days Tanzania Wildlife safari that includes game viewing (wildlife game drives). This means that you will go on a guided safari in all days you will be on this Tanzania safari. This safari however means that one should have the flexibility to start early on the first day.
Day 1: Arusha – Lake Manyara
Pick up from Arusha and transfer to Lake Manyara National park. We arrive in time for lunch at the lodge and after lunch do we head into the Lake Manyara National Park for an afternoon game drive. This national park is one of Tanzania’s most dramatically located wildlife areas, consisting of a massive but shallow soda lake (covering two-thirds of the park), located at the foot of the Great Rift Valley’s western escarpment.
The park’s varied habitat attracts a wide variety of animals, including one of Africa’s largest concentrations of elephants, Lake Manyara’s unique tree-climbing lions, as well as large flocks of flamingos attracted by the algae in the lake.
Dinner and overnight at the lodge or hotel
Day 2: Lake Manyara – Serengeti Plains
After breakfast we head towards the Serengeti National Park, via the beautiful high lying farmland of Karatu and the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. Leaving the highlands behind, we descend into the heart of wild Africa – the Serengeti National Park – with its endless plains, rolling into the distance as far as the eye can see.
We head to the central park area, known as the Seronera area, one of the richest wildlife habitats in the park, featuring the Seronera River, which provides a valuable water source to this area and therefore attracts wildlife well representative of most of the Serengeti’s species.
We arrive in time for lunch and enjoy an afternoon game drive in the Serengeti national park.
Dinner and overnight at the lodge or hotel
Day 3:L Serengeti Plains
Be one of only a few fortunate people to glide in a Hot Air Balloon over the Serengeti Plains (available at supplementary cost by pre-arrangement). Floating silently above the awakening bush, while spotting wildlife and enjoying the amazing scenery of Africa, across rivers and over numerous small villages.
We do an after breakfast game viewing drive along the Sogore river circuit, which loops into the plains south of the Seronera River, and which is good for possible Lion, Thomson gazelle, topi, ostrich and cheetah sightings. The Visitor Centre close to the Serengeti Seronera Lodge and public campsites, is well worth a visit after the morning’s game drive.
This nicely designed centre offers some interesting wildlife displays as well as a gift shop selling information leaflets and maps of the area.
The centre also has a shop where cold drinks and snacks can be purchased, as well as a picnic area and information trail up and around a nearby kopje. We will enjoy a relaxed picnic lunch at the centre in the shade of the giant acacia trees.
In the afternoon we will follow the Kopjes Circuit, which goes anti-clockwise around the Maasai Kopjes, which usually attract a number of lion and some formidably large cobras.
Kopjes are weathered granite outcrops, scattered around the plains, most of which are miniature ecosystems, providing shade and drinking water in pools left in the rock after the rains, this makes the kopjes particularly good for spotting wildlife in the dry seasons – including lions, which like to lie in wait for animals coming to drink!
Dinner and overnight at the lodge or hotel
Day 4: Serengeti Plains – Ngorongoro crater
After breakfast at the lodge do we depart to Ngorongoro Conservation area. We will stopover at Olduvai Gorge, boasting with a history dating back to the dawn of time. It was here, that the anthropologists Drs. Lois
and Mary Leakey discovered the skulls of ‘Nutcracker Man’ and ‘Handy Man’, both very significant links in the chain of human evolution.
We arrive in time for lunch at the lodge and after lunch we will descend over 600 meters into the crater to view wildlife for a half day’s safari tour. Supported by a year round water supply and fodder, the Ngorongoro National Park supports a vast variety of animals, which include herds of wildebeest, zebra, buffalo, eland, warthog, hippo, and giant African elephants.
Another big draw card to this picturesque national park, is it’s dense population of predators, which include lions, hyenas, jackals, cheetahs and the ever-elusive leopard, which sometimes requires a trained eye to spot.
We will visit Lake Magadi, a large but shallow alkaline lake in the southwestern corner, which is one of the main features of the crater. A large number of flamingos, hippos and other water birds can usually been seen here.
Dinner and overnight at the lodge or hotel
Day 5: Ngorongoro crater – Arusha
Enjoy breakfast, after which we will transfer back to Arusha. Upon arrival in Arusha we will have lunch and then we will end our safari.
