Tanzania: Tarangire, the Serengeti and Ngorongoro Crater

1. Day 1: Arrive in Arusha

   Kilimanjaro International Airport to Arusha

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

   Fly into Kilimanjaro International Airport (JRO), which sits between Moshi and Arusha. We meet you after arrivals and drive about an hour west, roughly 50 km, to your hotel in Arusha, the safari town at the foot of Mount Meru, which rises to 4,566 metres. On a clear day Kilimanjaro shows above the clouds from the airport road. Any arrival time works: if you land early, rest in the garden or ask the hotel for directions to the central market. 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

   Free time: Free until the evening briefing

   Activity: Any arrival time works on day 1.

   

2. Day 2: Tarangire's elephants and baobabs

   Arusha to Tarangire National Park

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

   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. 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. 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

   Easier option: Skip the late drive and stay at the lodge.

   Free time: Midday free at the lodge

   Activity: Wear khaki, beige or green, not dark blue or black, against tsetse flies.

3. Day 3: Tarangire at dawn, Mto wa Mbu and Lake Manyara

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

   • Drive about 2.5 h
   • Breakfast, lunch and dinner
   • Stay in Karatu
   Day 3 details

   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. 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

   Easier option: Skip the Lake Manyara drive: one vehicle takes you straight up to the Karatu lodge after lunch, when the group agrees.

   Free time: Evening free at the Karatu lodge

   Activity: About an hour on foot in Mto wa Mbu on flat farm paths, which can be muddy after rain.

   

4. Day 4: Over the highlands to the Serengeti

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

   • Drive about 5 h
   • Breakfast, lunch and dinner
   • Stay in Serengeti
   Day 4 details

   We leave Karatu at about half past seven and climb through the forest of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area to the crater rim. 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. 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

   Easier option: Stay at the vehicle at Naabi Hill instead of climbing it.

   Activity: About five hours of driving, broken by the rim viewpoint, Olduvai, a picnic at Naabi Hill and a game drive at the end; gravel and dust after the crater rim.

5. Day 5: A full day in the Serengeti

   Dawn and late-afternoon game drives around Seronera

   • Breakfast, lunch and dinner
   • Stay in Serengeti
   Day 5 details

   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. 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.

   Easier option: Skip the afternoon drive and stay at camp.

   Free time: Midday free at camp

6. Day 6: Serengeti at dawn, up to the Ngorongoro rim

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

   • Drive about 5 h
   • Breakfast, lunch and dinner
   • Stay in Ngorongoro
   Day 6 details

   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. 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. 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

   More active option: A rim walk with an armed ranger, where the lodge offers one.

   Free time: Late afternoon free on the crater rim

   Activity: About five hours of driving, the first part a game drive. The rim sits at about 2,200 metres and is cold at night and at dawn.

7. Day 7: Ngorongoro Crater at opening, then home

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

   • Drive about 4.5 h
   • Breakfast and lunch
   Day 7 details

   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. 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

   Activity: Book a flight leaving JRO after about 7:30 pm. The crater floor is cold at dawn: bring a warm layer.

   

Wildlife and weather: June to October is the dry season: cool mornings, thin grass and animals close to water, when Tarangire is at its best. The great herds move through the western and central Serengeti around June and July and are mostly in the far north from August, which this trip does not reach. January to March is green, with calving on the southern plains, and we may base the Serengeti nights near Ndutu then; Tarangire's animals spread out after the rains. We do not run in April, May or November.

• Arusha1 night
• Tarangire1 night
• Karatu1 night
• Serengeti2 nights
• Ngorongoro1 night