Tanzania Highlights

From Arusha, your guide will drive you to the Tarangire National Park. This commute takes approximately 3 hours to complete.

On this afternoon drive you will notice the unusually shaped baobab trees, also known as the “upside-down tree”. Look up and you might find the tree climbing African pythons. This is one of the world's largest species of snakes, but do not worry, it is also a non-venomous species. Tarangire's pythons climb trees, as do its lions and leopards, lounging in the branches.

In the early morning hours, your skilled guide will pick you up and take you for a game viewing drive through Tarangire National Park. The main highlight here is elephant, which mass in enormous numbers during the dry season June to December. General game is also good, although predators tend to be quite difficult to find. From January to May the park is beautiful and offers a more private experience with very low visitor numbers. Year round this is a unique safari experience.

On this game drive you might notice the swamps, tinged green year round, which are the focus for 550 bird varieties. This park boasts of having the most breeding species in one habitat anywhere in the world. On drier ground you find the Kori bustard, the heaviest flying bird; the stocking-thighed ostrich, the world's largest bird; and small parties of ground hornbills blustering like turkeys. More ardent bird-lovers might keep an eye open for screeching flocks of the dazzlingly colourful yellow-collared lovebird and the somewhat drabber rufous-tailed weaver and ashy starling – all endemic to the dry savannah of north-central Tanzania.

Your guide will pick you up from the Tarangire National Park and drive you to the massive Ngorongoro crater. This drive will take approximately 3 1/2 hours.

Just inside the Ngorongoro conservation area, a majestic waterfall beckons travelers to enjoy a light hike through the forest highlands. Along the way, experience the ‘elephant caves’: cave-like structures created by elephants digging up the earth to ingest the vitamin-rich soil. This soil also attracts other large animals like Buffalo, Bushbuck, Waterbuck, and Baboons.

Explore one of the most recognized wildlife conservation areas in Tanzania today. Depart your camp or lodge in a privately driven vehicle, along with a local expert guide, for approximately 20 to 30 minutes towards the Ngorongoro Crater.  To explore the extremes of the crater you’ll have to travel along one of three possible routes.  The first route travels from the top of the rim to the crater floor, the second route travels from the crater floor to the top of the crater rim, and the third routing travels both ways.  The Ngorongoro Crater is the world’s largest inactive, intact, and unfilled volcanic caldera.  This geological masterpiece was formed as a result of an extremely large volcanic explosion which caused the volcano to collapse in on itself, thus creating a crater.  The crater is roughly 20 kilometers wide and some 2000 feet deep, making the trip from crater floor to rim around 45 minutes by 4x4.  The extremely fertile crater floor is the reason why there is such a highly concentrated amount of wildlife here.  Over 20000 mammals call the crater home, including some of the only remaining black rhinos in the world.  The crater floor also boasts one of the highest carnivore densities in the world including large prides of lions, packs of hyenas and solitary predators like cheetahs and jackals.  A keen eye, and expertly recommended search patterns from your guide may help you spot some of the less common species like leopards, servals, and bat-eared foxes.

You are provided with a personalized, experienced tracker-guide and private transportation today whilst exploring around the Ngorongoro National Park grounds.

Enjoy a box lunch while you travel (included in tour price).

Your guide will pick you up from the Ngorongoro Conservation area and drive you to the famous plains of the Serengeti. On this drive you have the option of stopping at Olduvlai gorge, the Serengeti welcome centre and lookout point, or stop for lunch at a picnic spot. After entering Serengeti park you will have the chance to enjoy game viewing as you drive through the park to your next accommodation. This drive takes 5 to 6 hours depending on the number of stops you make and how much game viewing you enjoy along the way. Expect longer trip times during the rainy seasons.

The massive Olduvai Gorge or Oldupai Gorge is often referred to as “The Cradle of Mankind.”  Beginning in the eastern Serengeti plains, the gorge is roughly some 48 kilometers long.  As a result of millions of year of natural erosion, this gorge boasts a steep-sided ravine which cuts and stretches its way through the Great Rift Valley along eastern Africa.  The gorge is named after a commonly used plant by the Masai people with the scientific name of Sansevieria-Ehrenbergii, or Oldupai for short.

Get ready for an afternoon to remember as you set out accompanied by an experienced tracker-guide into the seamlessly never-ending expanses of the Serengeti.  The park is world renowned for its health stock of resident wildlife species, in particular the African Big 5 which or course includes buffalos, elephants, rhinoceros, leopards and lions.  Although with sightings considered a rarity, very few black rhinoceros still live within the confines of the park grounds.  The Serengeti is also home to the largest population of lions and giraffes in all of Africa.  Heavy concentrations of topi, gazelle, waterbuck and Coke’s hartebeest provide an ample food source for local carnivores including cheetah, hyenas and African wild dog.  The park is also home to some 500+ species of birds, ranging in size and weights some of these bird including ostrich, crowned crane, marabou stork and secretary bird are the most sought after photogenic birds on the planet.

This morning’s African adventure begins with an exploratory game drive through Tanzania’s oldest and most recognized National Parks, the Serengeti.  This dynamic location offers the most expansive game viewing in Tanzania, and considered by many as the best for game viewing location in all of Africa.  From predators to prey, great herds of grazing herbivores to tactically cunning packs carnivores, life on the plains of the Serengeti can best be defined as a complete “circle of life.”  A photographic dream will unfold before your eyes as giraffes and elephants feast on tasty shrubbery, whilst impalas, gazelles and buffalos dance carefully through the plains as to not become the latest meal for on-looking lions, cheetahs and hyenas.

Spend the day taking in the spectacle of the famous wildebeest migration. This annual migration through the Serengeti and Masai Mara is one of the safari highlights of Africa. The wildebeest migration moves in a basic clockwise direction throughout the year in Serengeti eco-system and move north into Masai Mara, Kenya from June/July through to Sep/October. Sightings cannot be guaranteed as the herds move according to availability of food source and migration movements can be erratic. The herds are accompanied by zebra and Thomson's gazelle and are stealthily hunted by local predators such as leopard, lion and hyena.

If time allows, your expert guide will squeeze in one more game drive before dropping you off at the airstrip. It will be your last chance to see the park's diverse range of animals.

Take your flight from Serengeti to Arusha today. The flight will do more than one stop on the way. The flight duration is approximately 2hrs.

Stop for lunch at the Arusha Hotel in this tourism capital of Tanzania. Shop the local souvenir market.

Includes opportunity to visit local handicrafts market to stock up on souvenirs.

Airport transfer between your Arusha hotel and Kilimanjaro International airport with private vehicle and english speaking driver.