8 Days Awe-inspiring Wildlife Safari in Tanzania

Wake up early to have your breakfast which starts around 7:00 AM before our travel from Arusha to Lake Manyara. We will provide you with safari briefings this morning before you leave your stay in Arusha.

Safari Briefing | Essential Information before Safari

During your safari, it’s essential to have your camera, sunscreen, long sleeve coat, binoculars, wipes, repellent, two to three or four pairs of clothes, towel, soap, jelly or lotion, and a toothbrush if you don’t want to use the hotel one. We will provide you with all other essential information before we set off westwards to our first safari destination, Lake Manyara National Park. We will take our lunch, embark on a game drive, and spend the night there. You may need some bills to buy handcrafted souvenirs, gifts for your loved ones at home, and tips.

Road Trip | Arusha to Lake Manyara National Park

Enjoy our pleasant road trip which takes us westwards from Arusha, 130km for about 2 hours on a tarmac road across coffee plantations, acacia scattered forest, and Maasai steppe. Along the road, you will be amazed by the occupations and character of Tanzanians, perhaps some native pastoralists herding their cattle to new pastures. While traveling with our expert, you will gain valuable knowledge about wildlife, our history, culture, and traditions. As we approach the park, you will start seeing tropical forests and troops of baboons will greet you at the gate, followed by the stunning escarpment wall on the west as we come from the east.

Game Drive in Lake Manyara National Park

Lake Manyara National Park is one of the most beautiful and scenic national parks in the northern circuit safari in Tanzania. Set against the rugged Rift Valley escarpment and characterized by its shimmering lake, Manyara is rich in vegetation and the wildlife that thrives here. After a picnic lunch, enjoy the game watching as majestic pink flamingos wade elegantly, feeding on algae from the shallow lake with alkaline waters. The beautiful landscape of Manyara comprises scenic environments such as diverse forests fed by waters seeping from the nearby escarpment. Monkeys are abundant, but look out too for the lions; perhaps the famous tree-climbing lions, giraffes feeding on the leaves of acacia and other tall shrubs, warthogs, and temperamental Cape buffaloes grazing along the lake shore.

Make sure to always stay in your comfortable vehicles except when permitted by your guides, especially when you drive near dangerous mammals like the hippopotamus, which can stay both on land and in water. On this visit, try to be cautious; hippos are unpredictable and might be on land or in a mud-smelling pool.

Meal Plan

Breakfast is provided at the hotel in Arusha. Lunch will be a nutritious and balanced meal, also provided by the camp for you to take out on safari. Your dinner will be a full, cooked meal created by the team at the Lake Manyara accommodation.

After breakfast at Lake Manyara, make sure to pack your entire luggage for your travel to the vast plain of Serengeti. Enjoy your pleasant tour which will offer you an opportunity to explore and experience the continent's most impressive safari destination in Africa.

Travel | Lake Manyara to Serengeti National Park

With Serengeti as our destination, and with your head full of magical memories of Manyara, we set off to the north and west, a 5-hour travel of around 222km, following the famous Rift Valley. On the journey, you will be enchanted by the colors of everyday Tanzanian life, the different faces of the tribesmen, their herds, and the bustle of the transport, the vibrant roadside stalls and markets. Soon, however, the human habitation gives way to the Serengeti plains. On arrival, we will enjoy our lunch.

Safari in Serengeti National Park

At last! Serengeti, the incomparable wonder of Tanzania, will be the stage for the natural animal theatrics which will be performed over the next few days. Your game drive here combines the known with the unknown, the certainty that you will be amazed with the uncertainty of exactly what you will see and when. Changing light, a changing cast of animal actors, ensuring that at every turn there is a new experience. Snap off some memorable photos, but don’t forget to simply take a deep breath and enjoy nature in its real-time, raw beauty.

Meal Plan

Breakfast is served at Lake Manyara accommodation. Lunch will be a nutritious and balanced meal, also provided by the stay for you to take out on safari. Your dinner will be a full, cooked meal created by the team at the Serengeti accommodation.

On your 4th day in Tanzania, expect abundant wildlife in Serengeti where the animals don’t have a regular schedule. What we see also depends on the season, but we may find some ‘big cats’ on the prowl and looking for prey, such as cheetahs, leopards, and lions on a typical day game drive.

Safari in Serengeti National Park

Today is a full day of discovery, a chance to enjoy the varied landscapes of the Central Serengeti. The Seronera River weaves its way through the Serengeti, providing water for all species of wildlife. You will also see the distinctive rocky outcrops, the famous kopjes which characterize the Serengeti landscape.

Kopjes are very hard and often granite. They have been aged at maybe 600 million years old and created even before the earth’s surface was pushed up from the ocean. Lions and other cats frequent these stony places and they are also home to snakes and hyraxes. Slowly weathering in wind and rain, they are peeling off in layers, which you may see on close inspection.

Everything here varies with the seasons, but in January, May, November, and December migrating herds join the already rich population of resident animals which live here year-round. Although muddy in the rainy season, the landscape turns black with hundreds of thousands of wildebeest – a simply incredible sight.

Meal Plan

Breakfast is enjoyed at the Serengeti accommodation. Lunch will be a nutritious and balanced meal, also provided by the stay for you to take out on safari. Your dinner will be a delicious meal at the Serengeti stay.

Optional Aerial Excursion | Balloon Safari

We can aid you in making a reservation for a balloon safari in Serengeti. This aerial excursion comprises an hour flying safari which starts with a pick up at around 5:00 AM from your stay in Serengeti and returns to join your guides for game drive sightings earlier at 7:00 AM.

Leave your bed for breakfast, encouraged by the beautiful sunrise on the savannah plains of Serengeti. Your morning game drive will allow you to fully experience wildlife as they are active and perhaps returning from a night hunt. After lunch, we drive en-route eastward to another spectacular destination.

Travel | Serengeti National Park – Ngorongoro Conservation Area

This afternoon we will travel south-east towards Ngorongoro, a distance of 145km which will take us around 3 hours.

Safari in Serengeti National Park

After our morning game drive, perhaps trying to find any animal that has – until now – been elusive enough to evade your eagle-eyed driver-guide, we head south-east towards Ngorongoro. If it has not already struck you with its vastness, Serengeti’s ‘endless plains’ will certainly now make a deep impression on you as we take the long, straight road which passes Simba Kopjes (famous from ‘The Lion King’) to reach Naabi Hill Gate, close to the divide between Serengeti and Ngorongoro. Here you can gather information at the gate’s visitor center, clamber up the hill for superb views back over the plains, or look out for a colorful agama lizard among the rocks.

Meal Plan

Breakfast is served at Serengeti accommodation. Lunch will be a nutritious and balanced meal, also provided by the stay for you to take out on safari. Your dinner will be a full, cooked meal created by the team at the Ngorongoro stay.

Like nothing else on Earth, the stunning crater of Ngorongoro is a unique home for many species of Tanzania’s wildlife. With some luck, you may even spot a black rhino here.

Travel | Ngorongoro Crater – Tarangire National Park

After our morning game drive in Ngorongoro’s incredible crater, we will enjoy our lunch before traveling southwards to Tarangire National Park. The travel time is 4 hours covering 200km.

Safari in Ngorongoro Crater

From our accommodation, we set off after breakfast, departing at 6 AM to reach the rim and then descend into the vast crater itself. At one side, there’s the Lerai Forest, a classic mountain forest landscape with almost tropical characteristics. This is good elephant country, so keep your eyes peeled. By the side of the nearby swampland is what is sometimes called the ‘elephant graveyard’ as the mighty male tuskers at the end of their lives come to chew on the soft, swampland grasses once their teeth have failed them.

The crater has a population of around 120 lions, with well-defined territories; 15,000 wildebeest, 9,000 zebra, 400 hyenas, and around 50 black rhinos. Many wildebeest and other herd animals are resident, benefiting from the many sources of year-round waters and are boosted by some migrators in season. Buffalo, Thomson’s gazelle, and eland are also present in numbers.

Hippos can be found in pools and swampland, and highland birdlife is colorful and plentiful around the waters. Flamingos can often be seen in Lake Magadi, which occupies part of the crater floor.

Meal Plan

Breakfast will be provided at the Ngorongoro accommodation. Lunch will be a nutritious and balanced meal, also provided by your accommodation for you to take out on safari. Your evening meal will be a full, cooked dinner created by the chef and his team at the Tarangire accommodation.

A Free Maasai Boma and Traditional Handcrafts

We provide a free visit to the Maasai boma and to handcrafts and souvenirs shopping after the safari. After the game drive in Ngorongoro crater, we are going to visit Maasai boma to experience Maasai traditional dances and songs followed by a visit to the handcraft shopping.

You can experience the drawings, handcrafts, and other souvenirs and may pick your choice to buy.

The diverse landscapes of Tarangire, spread across nearly 3,000 km2, are dotted by and contain a density and variety of wildlife.

Road trip: Tarangire National Park – Arusha (afternoon/evening)

After our morning game drive in Tarangire National Park and lunch, we will have about a 2-hour road trip covering the 120km back to Arusha.

Safari in Tarangire National Park

Tarangire is huge. As you stand at the park gate and look south, it stretches as far as the eye can see. Known as the ‘Elephant Playground,’ this phenomenal park contains huge herds of these mighty mammals. But Tarangire is also home to buffalo, lion, wildebeest, zebra, and gazelle, and the park can rival Serengeti for sheer animal densities.

What might you see today? Perhaps a solitary male lion stretched out beneath a tree, perhaps a trio of male cheetahs enjoying some lazy bonding time in the sun. Maybe some graceful Grant’s gazelle or zebra bounding away from the road or a couple of giraffe munching happily from the choicest acacia branches.

For Tarangire specialties, look out for kudu and oryx. Here as in other parks, it pays not to ignore the small animals. It’s so easy to be mesmerized by the power and majesty of an elephant or the elegance of the giraffe.

Ask your guide to find you an agama lizard, especially a male one who changes color in front of you according to the temperature! Or a hyrax, known as pimpi, an insignificant-looking creature of around 30cm in length… who astonishingly is related to an elephant!

Not many trees will pass you by without something of avian interest catching your eye. A memorable flash of color might be a lilac-breasted roller or blue-eared starling. Ostriches are plentiful and it’s hard not to chuckle at the sighting of the well-named, studious-looking secretary bird as it awkwardly pads across the grasslands.

The park is also famous for its splendid baobab trees, rolling savannah, and acacia woodland. It can be dusty – wear a scarf over your mouth – but this is a minor inconvenience for sighting wildlife in such abundance.

Walking Safari

Today you are going to experience a walking safari inside the national park with ranger escort and guiding. A walking safari will make it easy for you to see and touch some of the flora and fauna while your feet stretch on the ground.

Meal Plan

Breakfast is served at the Tarangire accommodation. Lunch will be a nutritious and balanced meal, also provided by the stay for you to take out on safari and enjoyed after your morning game drive, before we return you to Arusha to prepare for your flights by tomorrow.

As today is your departure day, only breakfast will be included.

Zanzibar Beach Holidays | Cultural Excursion | Kilimanjaro Extension

After your exhilarating time on safari, you may want to extend your Tanzanian holiday with time on Zanzibar’s wonderful beaches. Please contact us for details.