You leave Arusha after breakfast with a picnic lunch packed safely away. The Rift Valley landscape drifts past as your guide heads for Tarangire National Park, the least visited reserve on the itinerary, but one capable of delivering fantastic game viewing. Home to Tanzania’s biggest elephant population, Tarangire supports large numbers of buffalo, giraffe, zebra, and many antelope species, most evident during the dry season when concentrations of animals at the life-giving Tarangire River are at their peak. You stop at a picnic site and enjoy your lunch with breath-taking views of the park’s landscape and the river below you, and maybe in the company of elephants drinking and digging water from the sand River banks, after lunch proceeds with game viewing, and in the late afternoon leave the park and, drive to your, Lake Manyara Serena lodge nestled on the Great Rift valley escarpment with great views of Lake Manyara below you.

Main Destination: Tarangire National Park

Meal Plan: Lunch & Dinner

Accommodation: Lake Manyara Serena Lodge / Escarpment Luxury Lodge

After breakfast leaves the camp and proceed to Lake Manyara National Park for a day of game viewing, an area Hemingway described as, “the loveliest I had seen in Africa”. Lake Manyara National Park is a naturalist’s delight thanks to its diverse environments. Ranging from the underground-water forest and acacia woodlands to grasslands, swamps, marshes, and hot springs, the park is simply packed with wildlife. Over 400 species of birds have been recorded, including large flocks of flamingos and migratory water birds. Manyara’s forests ring with the call of monkeys and birds while its acacia woodlands are home to Manyara’s famous tree-climbing lions and slow-strolling elephants. The park is also home to the largest troop of baboons in Africa, zebra wildebeest, giraffe, hippos, leopard, and impala, and in the late evening, drive to your lodge for dinner and overnight.

Main Destination: Lake Manyara National Park

Meal Plan: Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner

Accommodation: Lake Manyara Serena Lodge / Escarpment Luxury Lodge

After breakfast, you will travel via the cooler highlands towards the southern Serengeti and at mid-day, you will reach the plains of the Serengeti. This park is the oldest and most famous in Tanzania and has a diversity of habitats and landscapes – short grass plains, savannah, thick bush, swamps and lakes. Bizarre rock formations called kopjes dot the grassy landscape where predators are often seen. The Serengeti is famous for the yearly migration when hundreds of thousands of wildebeests and zebras trek to find fresh grass and water. Game viewing is good year-round with great sightings of lions, cheetah, leopard, hippos, and giraffe in the evening drive to your lodge, Serengeti Serena Lodge.

Main Destination: Serengeti National Park

Meal Plan: Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner

Accommodation: Serengeti Serena Lodge / Serengeti Melia Lodge

The entire day is dedicated to game viewing in the Serengeti National Park. The areas that you visit will depend on where the migrating herds are. Predators usually follow closely behind the trekking animals and include lions, leopards (in the acacia trees) and cheetahs. During the short rainy season in November and December, the herds move from the hills in the north to the plains in the south. During the longer rainy season from April to June, they return to the central part of the park.  As the migration is completely dependent on the yearly rainfalls, the location of the herds may vary from year to year, but your guide will know where to locate the animals and where to see them best. You will spend another night at last night’s lodge.

Main Destination: Serengeti National Park

Meal Plan: Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner

Accommodation: Serengeti Serena Lodge / Serengeti Melia Lodge

After an early breakfast, we head out for another game drive in the Serengeti. We may have the opportunity to spot the “Big Five” – lion, elephant, buffalo, rhino, and leopard – before embarking on our journey to the Ngorongoro Crater.
The animals roam freely through the unfenced reserves, offering us an uninterrupted game-viewing experience.
Arriving at the edge of the crater, we have our first glimpse of what awaits us the following day – glistening streams, open grassland, and a myriad of animals.
We spend the evening and night at one of our carefully selected luxury lodges, boasting aesthetically tasteful restaurants and the most commodious of rooms for your rest, ease, and dreams of the African Wild.

Main Destination: Ngorongoro Conservation Area

Meal Plan: Breakfast, Lunch, & Dinner

Accommodation: Ngorongoro Serena Lodge / Ngorongoro Melia Lodge

Leave the Ngorongoro Melia lodge very early in the morning, and through the Ngorongoro Conservation before descending, 610 meters down to the grasslands of the crater floor, an area of about 265 square kilometres. Despite its small size, the Crater is a Big 5 country, and the openness of the terrain means easy and rewarding game viewing. You will spend the day exploring the crater floor, stopping to picnic on the grasslands amidst the grazing herds. Formed by a massive volcanic eruption, the world’s largest intact and unflooded caldera provides a year-round home to an astonishing 25,000 large mammals, including black rhino, wildebeest, and zebra, along with Africa’s densest concentrations of hyena. The Crater’s forests shelter elephants and buffalo, and its wetlands are home to hippos and flamingos, while lions, jackals, leopards, and caracals make up the full range of predators. Late afternoon, you leave the crater behind and drive back to Arusha, and you will be dropped off at Kilimanjaro International Airport.

Main Destination: Ngorongoro Crater

Meal Plan: Breakfast & Lunch

Accommodation: No Accommodation