Tanzania Safari and Zanzibar

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 you about an hour west to your hotel in Arusha, the safari town at the foot of Mount Meru, which rises to 4,566 metres. On a clear day you may also see the snow on Kilimanjaro from the airport road. Before dinner your See Sight Tours guide hosts a welcome briefing: how the safari days run and why we start early, what the included tipping pool covers, how to pack for the 15 kg limit on the Zanzibar flight, and what to wear against tsetse flies. If you land early, the rest of the day is yours to rest.

   Included

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

   Free time: Rest of the day free

   Activity: Any arrival time works on day 1. If your flight lands late, your guide catches you up at breakfast.

2. Day 2: Tarangire's elephants and baobabs

   Arusha to Tarangire National Park, then up to Karatu

   • Drive about 4 h
   • Breakfast, lunch and dinner
   • Stay in Karatu
   Day 2 details

   We leave Arusha after an early breakfast and drive about two hours south-west to Tarangire National Park, arriving while the air is still cool and the tsetse flies are slow. The park is named for the river that runs through it, and in the dry months from June to October the river is one of the few reliable sources of water for miles, so elephant herds gather along its banks in numbers few parks match. Huge baobabs stand over the grass, some scarred where elephants have fed on the bark. You ride in a 4x4 with a pop-up roof, six guests at most per vehicle, so everyone has a window. After a picnic lunch in the park we drive on through Mto wa Mbu and up the Rift Valley escarpment to Karatu, arriving in the early evening for two nights in the cooler highlands.

   Included

   • Game drive in Tarangire National Park
   • Picnic lunch in the park

   Activity: About 2 hours to Tarangire and 2 hours on to Karatu, plus the game drive. Wear khaki or green, not dark blue or black, against tsetse flies.

   

3. Day 3: Lake Manyara and Mto wa Mbu

   Karatu to Lake Manyara National Park and back

   • Drive about 1 h
   • Breakfast, lunch and dinner
   • Stay in Karatu
   Day 3 details

   No early alarm today. After breakfast we drop about 30 minutes down the escarpment to Lake Manyara National Park, where groundwater forest at the foot of the Rift Valley wall opens onto grassland and a shallow soda lake. Baboon troops sit along the track, blue monkeys move through the fig and mahogany trees, and elephants feed in the forest shade. Flamingos and pelicans gather on the water in some seasons. Other operators sell this game drive as an extra; here it is in your price. At midday we stop in Mto wa Mbu, Swahili for river of mosquitoes, for lunch and a walk with a local guide through the market, the banana plantations and the rice fields, with a fair fee paid to the community. The afternoon is free at your Karatu lodge, or join a short walk on a coffee farm in the hills.

   Included

   • Game drive in Lake Manyara National Park
   • Lunch and a village and market walk in Mto wa Mbu with a local guide
   • Coffee farm walk near Karatu, by choice

   Easier option: Skip the coffee farm and rest at the lodge.

   Free time: Afternoon free in Karatu

   

4. Day 4: Ngorongoro Crater at first light, into the Serengeti

   Karatu to Ngorongoro Crater, Olduvai Gorge and the Serengeti

   • Drive about 6 h
   • Breakfast, lunch and dinner
   • Stay in Serengeti
   Day 4 details

   This is the longest day of the trip, and it is worth it. We leave Karatu at first light with a packed breakfast and reach the Ngorongoro gate as it opens, so we drop to the crater floor in the morning mist, among the first vehicles of the day. Ngorongoro is a collapsed volcano about 600 metres deep, with some 260 square kilometres of grassland, swamp and the soda lake Magadi on its floor. Lions, hyenas, buffalo, zebra and wildebeest live here all year, and it is your best chance on this trip of a black rhino, though they are few and often distant. We picnic at a quieter spot your driver-guide picks, climb out at midday, stop at the Olduvai Gorge museum, where Mary Leakey found a skull about 1.75 million years old in 1959, and enter the Serengeti at Naabi Hill, game driving on the way to camp.

   Included

   • Ngorongoro Crater game drive from gate opening
   • Picnic lunch on the crater floor
   • Olduvai Gorge museum
   • Game drive from Naabi Hill to camp

   Activity: A long day of about 11 hours, much of it on rough roads. The crater rim is cold at dawn: bring a warm layer.

   

5. Day 5: Serengeti sunrise and sunset

   Dawn and late-afternoon game drives in the Serengeti

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

   We leave camp before sunrise, which here near the equator comes at about half past six all year, with coffee in a flask and breakfast packed in the vehicle. The first hours are when the cats are most active and the light is soft and gold, so keep your camera ready. The Serengeti covers some 14,750 square kilometres; in the central Seronera valley lions rest on the granite outcrops called kopjes and leopards lie along the branches of the sausage trees by the river. If you have booked the optional balloon flight, you lift off at dawn instead and meet us after a bush breakfast. We return to camp for lunch and a rest through the heat of the day, then head out again at about four for a late drive that ends with the sun going down over the plains.

   Included

   • Dawn game drive with packed breakfast
   • 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: A full day where the herds are

   Full-day game drive in the Serengeti, by season

   • Breakfast, lunch and dinner
   • Stay in Serengeti
   Day 6 details

   A full day out, planned around where the animals are. On departures from late January to March we stay on the southern plains near Ndutu, where hundreds of thousands of wildebeest give birth within a few weeks, usually peaking in February, and lions, cheetahs and hyenas follow close behind. On departures from late June to October we stay in the central Serengeti, which keeps its resident predators all year. The great herds move north through the western and central Serengeti in June and July and are mostly near the Mara River from August, so the river crossings are not part of this trip. Either way we take a picnic lunch, stop at a hippo pool, and give your driver-guide time to wait at a good sighting rather than rush to the next one. A sundowner on the way back closes your third evening on the plains.

   Included

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

   Easier option: Return to camp at lunchtime with one vehicle, when the group agrees.

   

7. Day 7: Fly to Zanzibar, sunset at Forodhani

   Serengeti airstrip to Zanzibar, then Stone Town

   • By plane
   • Breakfast
   • Stay in Stone Town
   Day 7 details

   A short last game drive at first light, breakfast at camp, then we drive to the airstrip for the light-aircraft flight to Zanzibar, which usually stops or connects in Arusha on the way. There is no long road back to Arusha and no dead day there: you swap the plains for the Indian Ocean by early afternoon. We meet you at Abeid Amani Karume International Airport (ZNZ) and drive about 20 minutes to your hotel in Stone Town, the old trading quarter of Zanzibar City and a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2000. Before sunset we walk to Forodhani Gardens on the seafront, which faces west across the harbour. As the light fades the food stalls fire up their grills, with seafood skewers and Zanzibar pizza, a stuffed and folded street pancake. Dinner here is on you, and your guide shows you how it works.

   Included

   • Short dawn game drive
   • Flight from the Serengeti to Zanzibar
   • Transfer from Zanzibar airport (ZNZ) to Stone Town
   • Sunset walk to Forodhani Gardens with your guide

   Free time: Evening free at Forodhani

   Activity: Light-aircraft baggage limit of about 15 kg per person in a soft bag.

   

8. Day 8: Stone Town early, a spice farm, the east coast

   Stone Town walk and spice farm, then across the island to Jambiani

   • Drive about 1.5 h
   • Breakfast and lunch
   • Stay in Jambiani
   Day 8 details

   We start the Stone Town walk at about half past seven, while the lanes are cool and quiet and before the day visitors arrive. A licensed local guide leads you through alleys lined with carved wooden doors, some studded with brass, past the Old Fort, built by Omani Arabs at the end of the 17th century, and the House of Wonders, the sultan's palace of 1883, now under restoration after part of it collapsed in 2020. At the Anglican cathedral, built on the site of the last open slave market, which closed in 1873, your guide tells the harder history of the island. Then we drive out of town to a spice farm to see cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, vanilla and pepper growing, with lunch cooked there. In the afternoon we cross the island, about an hour and a quarter, to Jambiani on the south-east coast for two nights by the sea.

   Included

   • Early Stone Town walk with a licensed local guide
   • Spice farm visit with lunch
   • Transfer to Jambiani

   Free time: Late afternoon free on the beach

   Activity: About 2 hours on foot in Stone Town on narrow, uneven lanes. Cover shoulders and knees.

9. Day 9: Low tide in Jambiani, Jozani's red colobus

   A free day on the coast, with an optional morning in Jozani

   • Breakfast and dinner
   • Stay in Jambiani
   Day 9 details

   This is your free day, and the only plan is optional. The east coast faces the sunrise, so if you are up at about six you can watch it come up over the reef from the beach. Jambiani has a big tidal range: at low tide the sea pulls back hundreds of metres, and you can walk out over warm shallows and sandbanks to the seaweed farms that village women tend in the lagoon. Ask at reception for the tide times. In the morning your guide takes anyone who wants to go to Jozani Chwaka Bay National Park, about 30 minutes away, the island's only national park and home to the Zanzibar red colobus, a monkey found nowhere else, with a boardwalk through the mangroves. Back by lunch, the afternoon is for swimming, reading or a sail in a wooden outrigger, then a farewell dinner together.

   Included

   • Jozani Chwaka Bay National Park with your guide, by choice
   • Farewell dinner

   Optional experiences

   • Outrigger sail in the lagoon
   • Kitesurf lesson in nearby Paje

   Free time: Afternoon free

   

10. Day 10: A last swim, then home

    Jambiani to Zanzibar airport

    • Drive about 1 h
    • Breakfast
    Day 10 details

    A slow last morning. Take one more early swim, or a last walk across the sand if the tide is low, then breakfast. Check-out time is set by the hotel, and we ask for a late check-out when your flight leaves in the evening. We drive you about an hour across the island to Abeid Amani Karume International Airport (ZNZ) in time for your flight home. Most long-haul connections from Zanzibar run through hubs such as Dar es Salaam, Nairobi, Addis Ababa, Doha, Dubai or Istanbul, so plan your onward tickets with enough time to connect. If you would like to stay on, we can add extra nights on the coast or back in Stone Town for you. Your trip ends at the airport, with sand still in your shoes.

    Included

    • Drop-off at Zanzibar airport (ZNZ)

    Free time: Morning free

    

Wildlife and weather: Late June to October is the dry season: cool mornings, thin grass and animals near water. The great herds move north through the western and central Serengeti in June and July and are mostly in the far north from August. Late January to March is calving season on the southern plains, with green grass, predators close behind the herds and fewer vehicles. April and May bring the long rains, so we do not run then.

• Arusha1 night
• Karatu2 nights
• Serengeti3 nights
• Stone Town1 night
• Jambiani2 nights