Tanzania: Tarangire, the Serengeti and Ngorongoro Crater

Arrive in Arusha

Kilimanjaro International Airport to Arusha

• Welcome dinner
• Stay in Arusha
• Drive about 1 h

Evening

Before dinner your See Sight Tours guide meets the group for a short briefing on the week: why the safari days start early, how the two 4x4s rotate seats so everyone gets a window, what to wear against tsetse flies in Tarangire, and how the tipping pool already in your price works. Then we sit down together to a welcome dinner. If your flight lands late, your guide catches you up at breakfast.

Included

• Pick-up at Kilimanjaro International Airport (JRO)
• Welcome briefing with your guide
• Welcome dinner

Tarangire's elephants and baobabs

Arusha to Tarangire National Park

• Breakfast, lunch and dinner
• Stay in Tarangire
• Drive about 2 h

Morning

After breakfast we leave Arusha in two 4x4 Land Cruisers with pop-up roofs, at most six guests in each, and drive about two hours south-west on tarmac through Maasai grazing country to Tarangire National Park.

Afternoon

We reach the gate by mid-morning and game drive slowly to our lodge, in or beside the park, for lunch. The Tarangire River runs the length of the park, and in the dry months from June to October it is one of the few reliable sources of water for miles, so elephant herds gather along the river in the dry months. Huge baobabs stand over the grass, many scarred where elephants have stripped the bark. The middle of the day is yours at the lodge, while the animals shelter from the heat too.

Evening

At about four we go out again along the river until sunset, then back for dinner. Sleeping here, instead of passing through, is what gives us tomorrow's dawn drive.

Included

• Game drive into Tarangire National Park to the lodge
• Lunch at the lodge
• Late-afternoon game drive along the Tarangire River to sunset

Tarangire at dawn, Mto wa Mbu and Lake Manyara

Tarangire to Mto wa Mbu and Lake Manyara National Park, then up to Karatu

• Breakfast, lunch and dinner
• Stay in Karatu
• Drive about 2.5 h

Morning

We are out at first light, about half past six, when the park is cool, the cats are still moving and the light on the baobabs is soft. Back at the lodge for a late breakfast, then about an hour and a half north on tarmac, some 90 km, to Mto wa Mbu, Swahili for river of mosquitoes, a busy farming town at the foot of the Rift Valley wall.

Afternoon

A local guide walks us through the market, the banana groves and the irrigated rice fields, and we stop for lunch in the village, with a fee paid to the community. In the afternoon we enter Lake Manyara National Park, a few minutes away. The track runs through groundwater forest, where baboon troops sit by the road and elephants feed in the shade, then out to grassland and the shallow soda lake, with flamingos and pelicans in some seasons. Other operators sell this drive as an extra; it is in your price. Then we climb the escarpment to Karatu, about 40 minutes.

Included

• Dawn game drive in Tarangire National Park
• Mto wa Mbu market, banana and rice field walk with a local guide
• Lunch in Mto wa Mbu
• Game drive in Lake Manyara National Park

Over the highlands to the Serengeti

Karatu over the Ngorongoro highlands to Olduvai Gorge and Naabi Hill, then the central Serengeti

• Breakfast, lunch and dinner
• Stay in Serengeti
• Drive about 5 h

Morning

From the rim viewpoint our guide chooses, on a clear morning you look some 600 metres down into the caldera you will drive into on day 7. The road then drops down the dry western slopes on gravel, past Maasai herders and their cattle, to Olduvai Gorge, where Mary Leakey found a hominin skull about 1.75 million years old in 1959; the small museum and the viewpoint over the gorge take about an hour.

Afternoon

A picnic lunch follows at Naabi Hill, the gate into the Serengeti, with a short climb for the view over the short-grass plains. This is a long day, about five hours of driving in all and over our usual four, because there is no shorter road into the Serengeti. The rim, Olduvai and the Naabi picnic break it up, and the last 50 km to camp near Seronera is a slow game drive, not a transfer. We arrive in the late afternoon.

Included

• Ngorongoro Crater rim viewpoint on the highland road
• Olduvai Gorge museum and viewpoint
• Picnic lunch and short walk at Naabi Hill
• Game drive from Naabi Hill to camp

A full day in the Serengeti

Dawn and late-afternoon game drives around Seronera

• Breakfast, lunch and dinner
• Stay in Serengeti

Morning

The vehicles leave camp before sunrise, which this close to the equator comes at about half past six all year, with coffee in a flask and breakfast packed for the plains. The first hours are when lions and cheetahs hunt and the light is low and warm. The Serengeti covers some 14,750 square kilometres, and the Seronera valley at its centre holds resident predators in every season: lions rest on the granite outcrops called kopjes, and leopards often lie up in the sausage trees along the river. If you have booked the optional balloon flight, you lift off at dawn instead and rejoin us after a bush breakfast.

Afternoon

Back at camp for lunch, the hot middle hours are for a nap or a book in the shade. About four, we drive out again until sundown. Your driver-guide has time to wait at a good sighting rather than race to the next one.

Included

• Dawn game drive with packed breakfast
• Lunch at camp
• Late-afternoon game drive to sunset

Optional experiences

• Hot-air balloon flight at dawn. Booked in advance.

Serengeti at dawn, up to the Ngorongoro rim

Seronera to Naabi Hill, then up to the Ngorongoro Crater rim

• Breakfast, lunch and dinner
• Stay in Ngorongoro
• Drive about 5 h

Morning

A last dawn drive around Seronera, then breakfast at camp and we start back east. The run to Naabi Hill, about 50 km, is another game drive, and your guide plans the route around the morning's sightings.

Afternoon

From the gate it is about three hours on gravel across the plains and up the western slopes of the highlands to the Ngorongoro crater rim, with a picnic lunch on the way. That makes about five hours of driving, over our usual four, because the Serengeti has no shorter way out; the game drive and lunch break it up. We reach the lodge on the rim in the middle of the afternoon, at about 2,200 metres, and the rest of the day is yours: watch the light move across the crater floor from the terrace, take a rim walk with an armed ranger where the lodge offers one, or rest. Evenings up here are cold.

Evening

Sleeping on the rim is the point of this night: from here we are minutes from the descent road when it opens.

Included

• Dawn game drive in the Serengeti
• Game drive out to Naabi Hill
• Picnic lunch on the way to the rim

Ngorongoro Crater at opening, then home

Ngorongoro Crater floor, then Mto wa Mbu, Arusha and Kilimanjaro International Airport

• Breakfast and lunch
• Drive about 4.5 h

Morning

We leave the lodge at about six with a packed breakfast and drive down the descent road as it opens, among the first vehicles of the day, while mist still lies on the floor. Ngorongoro is a collapsed volcano about 600 metres deep, with some 260 square kilometres of grassland, swamp and the soda lake Magadi below its walls. Lions, hyenas, buffalo, zebra and wildebeest live here all year, and it is the best chance on this trip of a black rhino, though they are few and usually distant. We eat breakfast at a picnic site by a hippo pool and climb out late in the morning, as the floor gets busy.

Afternoon

Then it is the road home: about three and a half hours to Arusha, broken by lunch in Mto wa Mbu, then about an hour to Kilimanjaro airport. At about four and a half hours in all, it is a long day because it is the way home. If you are staying on, we drop you at your Arusha hotel, an hour earlier. Book a flight leaving after about 7:30 pm.

Included

• Ngorongoro Crater game drive from the opening of the descent road
• Picnic breakfast on the crater floor
• Lunch in Mto wa Mbu
• Drop-off at Kilimanjaro International Airport (JRO) or your Arusha hotel