Nairobi to Zanzibar: the Masai Mara, the Serengeti and the coast by land

Arrive in Nairobi

Jomo Kenyatta International Airport to your hotel in Nairobi

• Repas du soir
• Nuit : Nairobi
• Environ 45 min de route

Après-midi

If you are in by lunchtime, the afternoon is free: the Nairobi National Museum or the Karen Blixen Museum are an easy taxi ride, and the hotel desk can arrange one.

Soir

In the early evening your See Sight Tours guide meets the group for a briefing on the twelve days: why we start early in the parks, how the window seats rotate, the 15 kg soft-bag limit on the small planes, and the papers to keep in your day bag for the Namanga border on day 4. Then we sit down to a welcome dinner together. Repack into a soft bag tonight; tomorrow we fly.

Compris

• Pick-up at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (NBO)
• Welcome briefing with your guide
• Welcome dinner

Fly over the Rift Valley to the Masai Mara

Wilson Airport in Nairobi to an airstrip in the Masai Mara, then a game drive to camp

• Petit-déjeuner, repas du midi et repas du soir
• Nuit : Masai Mara
• Environ 30 min de route

Matin

After breakfast it is half an hour across town to Wilson Airport, Nairobi's small-plane airport, for a scheduled flight of 45 minutes to an hour, sometimes with a stop at another airstrip. Below you the land drops away into the Great Rift Valley, then rises to the rolling grass of the Mara. Our Kenyan driver-guides wait at the airstrip with the 4x4s: at most six guests in each, every seat a window, and a pop-up roof to stand under for photos. We game drive to camp, a permanent tented camp in or close to the reserve with proper beds and a private bathroom, for two nights.

Après-midi

Lunch is at camp, then a rest through the heat.

Soir

At about four we head out again as the light softens, looking for lions, elephants, topi and giraffe, and are back at dusk for dinner.

Compris

• Flight from Wilson Airport, Nairobi, to the Masai Mara
• Game drive from the airstrip to camp
• Late-afternoon game drive in the Masai Mara National Reserve
• Masai Mara National Reserve fees

A full day in the Mara and a Maasai village

Dawn-to-afternoon game drive in the Masai Mara National Reserve, then a Maasai village near camp

• Petit-déjeuner, repas du midi et repas du soir
• Nuit : Masai Mara

Matin

We roll out at about 6:30 am with coffee in a flask and breakfast packed, because the first hours are when the cats are moving and the light is low and gold. The Masai Mara is the Kenyan end of the Serengeti ecosystem, about 1,500 square kilometres of grassland cut by the Mara and Talek rivers. From about July the wildebeest and zebra herds are usually here, and a crossing of the Mara River is possible, though nobody can say when or where. The driver-guides share sightings by radio, and we wait at a crossing point only as long as the group wants. We picnic under an acacia and are back at camp by about two for a shower and a rest. At about half past four we drive a few minutes to a Maasai village, an enkang of homes inside a thorn fence, where your hosts show you their houses, explain cattle and family life and talk about school and land. The visit fee goes to the community; beadwork is for sale without pressure.

Compris

• Dawn-to-afternoon game drive in the Masai Mara National Reserve
• Picnic lunch in the reserve
• Maasai village visit with a local host
• Sundowner at camp

Activités en option

• Hot-air balloon flight at dawn with a bush breakfast. Booked in advance; you rejoin the group after breakfast.

Back to Nairobi and over the Namanga border to Arusha

Masai Mara airstrip to Wilson Airport, then by road south through Kajiado and the Namanga border to Arusha

• Petit-déjeuner, repas du midi et repas du soir
• Nuit : Arusha
• Environ 4.5 h de route

Après-midi

So we game drive to the airstrip, take the earliest flight we can book back to Wilson Airport, usually mid-morning, and sit down to lunch in Nairobi. Then it is about 165 km south through Athi River and Kajiado to Namanga, with a coffee stop on the way, roughly two and a half hours. Namanga is a one-stop border post: Kenyan exit and Tanzanian entry happen in one building, usually in about an hour, and your guide walks you through it with passport, e-visa and yellow fever certificate in hand. Our Tanzanian driver-guides meet us on the far side. The last 110 km, about two hours, run past Mount Meru into Arusha on the main tarmac highway, the only road we drive in Tanzania after dark.

Soir

Expect to arrive in the early evening, around 7 pm and often after dark. Dinner at the hotel, then bed.

Compris

• Game drive to the airstrip
• Flight from the Masai Mara to Wilson Airport, Nairobi
• Road transfer from Nairobi to Arusha by the Namanga border
• Help through Kenyan exit and Tanzanian entry at Namanga

Tarangire, elephants on the river

Arusha to Tarangire National Park by Makuyuni, then an afternoon game drive

• Petit-déjeuner, repas du midi et repas du soir
• Nuit : Tarangire
• Environ 2 h de route

Matin

A slow start after yesterday: breakfast at the hotel and away at about 8:30. It is roughly two hours west on good tarmac through Maasai grazing land to Makuyuni, then south to the gate of Tarangire National Park. In the dry months from June to October the Tarangire River is the only water for miles, so elephants come to it in large family herds, alongside zebra, wildebeest, giraffe and buffalo. The park is also known for its baobabs, swollen grey trunks that can be many centuries old, and for its birds.

Après-midi

We game drive to our camp, inside the park or on its boundary, for lunch and a rest through the heat of the day. At about four we head out along the river, where the sandy banks are cut into low cliffs and the herds come down to drink in the late light. Lions and leopards live here too, though the long grass hides them well.

Soir

Back at dusk for dinner. One night here is deliberate: it breaks the drive to the crater into two short days.

Compris

• Game drive from the gate to camp
• Late-afternoon game drive along the Tarangire River
• Tarangire National Park fees

Tarangire at dawn, up to the Ngorongoro rim

Dawn game drive in Tarangire, then via Mto wa Mbu and Karatu to the Ngorongoro Crater rim

• Petit-déjeuner, repas du midi et repas du soir
• Nuit : Ngorongoro
• Environ 4 h de route

Matin

Back at camp for a late breakfast and the bags, then we leave the park and drive north-west for about two hours to Mto wa Mbu, a market town at the foot of the Rift Valley wall, where banana groves and rice paddies are fed by springs from the escarpment.

Après-midi

Lunch is local food in town. Then we climb the escarpment above Lake Manyara and cross the red-soil farmland around Karatu, where coffee and wheat grow. At the Lodoare gate we enter the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1979, and climb through cloud forest to the crater rim at about 2,300 metres, arriving in the late afternoon after about 190 km.

Soir

We sleep one night on the rim so we can be at the descent gate when it opens. The air is cool up here, so have a warm layer ready for the view down into the crater as the sun goes.

Compris

• Dawn game drive in Tarangire National Park
• Lunch in Mto wa Mbu
• Ngorongoro Conservation Area fees

Ngorongoro Crater at gate opening, on to the Serengeti

Ngorongoro Crater floor, then Olduvai Gorge and Naabi Hill to Seronera in the central Serengeti

• Petit-déjeuner, repas du midi et repas du soir
• Nuit : Serengeti
• Environ 4 h de route

Après-midi

This is the second-longest day: the crater from dawn, then about four hours of road, broken by Olduvai and lunch. We leave the lodge in the dark with breakfast packed and reach the descent road as the gate opens, around 6 am, so we drop to the floor through morning mist among the first vehicles. Ngorongoro is a collapsed volcano about 600 metres deep, its floor some 260 square kilometres of grass, swamp, forest and the soda lake Magadi. Lions, hyenas, buffalo, zebra and wildebeest live here all year, and it is the best chance on the trip of a black rhino, though they are few and often far off. We eat breakfast at a picnic site on the floor and climb out at about ten, as the vehicles build up. Then west to Olduvai Gorge, where a small museum tells how Mary Leakey found a hominin skull about 1.75 million years old in 1959. Picnic lunch there, then on to the Naabi Hill gate of the Serengeti and a game drive across the short-grass plains to camp near Seronera, our base for two nights.

Compris

• Ngorongoro Crater game drive from gate opening, with the crater fee
• Picnic breakfast on the crater floor
• Olduvai Gorge museum
• Game drive from Naabi Hill to camp
• Serengeti National Park fees

A full day in the Serengeti

Dawn and full-day game drives in the Serengeti, planned around the herds

• Petit-déjeuner, repas du midi et repas du soir
• Nuit : Serengeti

Matin

Out before sunrise, which near the equator comes at about half past six all year, with coffee in a flask and breakfast packed. The Serengeti covers about 14,750 square kilometres and has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1981. Around Seronera the river holds water and shade through the dry season, so the area keeps resident game: lions on the granite outcrops called kopjes, leopards draped in sausage trees, cheetahs on the open grass. From July to October most of the wildebeest and zebra are in the far north and across the border in the Mara, so the driver-guides read the radio and the day and decide whether to stay central for the predators or head north towards stragglers. In June the herds can still be moving through the western and central areas. We picnic in the bush, stop at a hippo pool, and take time at good sightings instead of racing between them. A sundowner on the way back closes the last full day of the safari.

Compris

• Dawn game drive with packed breakfast
• Full-day game drive with picnic lunch
• Hippo pool stop
• Sundowner on the evening drive

Activités en option

• Hot-air balloon flight at dawn with a bush breakfast. Approximate; booked in advance.

Serengeti sunrise, then fly to Zanzibar

Dawn game drive in the Serengeti, flight from Seronera to Zanzibar with a stop, then Stone Town

• Petit-déjeuner et repas du midi
• Nuit : Stone Town
• Environ 18 min de route

Matin

One last drive at first light, then breakfast and the bags into the 4x4s, and a game drive to the Seronera airstrip for a late-morning scheduled light-aircraft flight to Zanzibar.

Après-midi

It usually stops at Arusha or Lake Manyara on the way and takes about three hours in all, with a packed lunch in hand. Say goodbye to the Tanzanian driver-guides at the airstrip; your See Sight Tours guide flies on with you. The plains give way to the Rift Valley and then the green coast and the pale blue of the Zanzibar Channel. Our van meets us at Zanzibar's airport, a short drive from Stone Town, the old trading town on the island's west coast and a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2000. We check into a hotel inside the old town in the middle of the afternoon.

Soir

The evening is free: walk to the Forodhani Gardens, where stalls grill seafood at sunset.

Compris

• Dawn game drive in the Serengeti
• Flight from Seronera to Zanzibar
• Transfer from Zanzibar airport to Stone Town

Stone Town on foot, a spice farm and the north coast

Stone Town walk, a spice farm in the island's interior, then north to Nungwi or Kendwa

• Petit-déjeuner et repas du midi
• Nuit : Nungwi
• Environ 1.5 h de route

Après-midi

Then we drive out to a spice farm in the green interior, where the farmer cuts open a nutmeg, peels cinnamon bark and shows how cloves, vanilla and pepper grow, and lunch is cooked with what we have just seen. In the afternoon it is about an hour north to Nungwi or Kendwa, where the tide moves far less than on the east coast and the sea is swimmable most of the day.

Soir

Check in to the beach hotel for two nights; the evening is yours on the sand.

Compris

• Guided Stone Town walk with a local guide
• Spice farm visit with lunch
• Transfer to the north coast

A free day on Zanzibar's north coast

Free day at Nungwi or Kendwa

• Petit-déjeuner et repas du soir
• Nuit : Nungwi

Soir

After ten days of dawn starts and long drives, this day is yours and nothing is planned until the farewell dinner. Swim, read in the shade, or walk the beach towards Nungwi village, where dhow builders still shape wooden boats by hand on the sand. If you want more, your guide can book a boat out to the reef around Mnemba Island to snorkel among reef fish and often dolphins, or a sunset sail in a traditional dhow along the coast. Both are optional, priced up front and booked only if you ask, never sold in the vehicle. The north coast faces west, so the sun goes down over the sea, and in the evening the group gathers on the beach for a farewell dinner of seafood and Swahili dishes, swapping stories from the Mara, the border, the crater and the reef. Bring reef-safe sunscreen, and keep swimwear to the beach out of respect for the villages along the shore.

Compris

• Farewell dinner on the beach

Activités en option

• Snorkelling trip to the reef at Mnemba Island. Booked the day before.
• Sunset dhow sail along the north coast. Booked the day before.

Leave from Zanzibar

Nungwi or Kendwa to Abeid Amani Karume International Airport (ZNZ)

• Petit-déjeuner
• Environ 1.5 h de route

Matin

A slow morning: breakfast facing the sea and a last swim if you like. We time your transfer to your flight. Abeid Amani Karume International Airport (ZNZ) is about 65 km south of the north coast, roughly an hour and a half by road through villages and plantations, so we usually leave three hours or more before an international departure. Your guide sees the group off and checks each flight before saying goodbye, so nobody is left at a roadside or a bus stand. Zanzibar has direct flights to the Gulf, to some European cities on certain days, and to Nairobi, Dar es Salaam and Addis Ababa, which connect onward to Canada and the United States; plan on at least one change. Book a flight after about 1 pm if you want the morning on the beach; any time works, and the transfer is included whenever you go. If you would like to stay on, we can book extra beach nights at the same hotel.

Compris

• Drop-off at Abeid Amani Karume International Airport (ZNZ)