DAY 1 Arrival Day and Welcome to Tanzania
Whatever your arrival time at Kilimanjaro International Airport, your Easy Travel driver-guide will be waiting for you with a warm welcoming smile. Kick back and relax in your comfortable vehicle as he takes you to your hotel in Arusha, Tanzania’s self-styled ‘safari capital.’ On your journey to the hotel, you will get a brief impression of this large, bustling, commercial city. Depending on your arrival time, you may have your pre-safari briefing today; if not, it will take place early tomorrow morning.
DAY 2 Arusha – Tarangire
Tour Briefing
Unless your arrival time yesterday allowed time for your safari briefing, then this will take place after breakfast. We will provide you with all the essential information before we set off to our first safari destination, the diverse Tarangire National Park, where we will enjoy lunch, take an afternoon game drive and spend the night.
Journey: Arusha to Tarangire National Park
Our two-hour morning journey first takes us westwards from Arusha. Along the route, your eyes will be opened to all the colours and character of Tanzania: perhaps some Maasai herdsmen driving their flocks of goats to new pastures. You’ll get to know your driver-guide, amazed at his depth of knowledge as he effortlessly answers all your questions.
Day’s Highlight
Your game drive in Tarangire, with its incredible diversity, massive baobab trees and herds of elephants.
Safari (Game Drive) in Tarangire National Park
Tarangire is huge. As you stand at the park gate and look south, it stretches as far as the eye can see. Known as the ‘Elephant Playground,’ this phenomenal park contains huge herds of these mighty mammals. But Tarangire is also home to buffalo, lion, wildebeest, zebra and gazelle and the park can rival Serengeti for sheer animal densities. What might you see today? Perhaps a solitary male lion stretched out beneath a tree, perhaps a trio of male cheetah enjoying some lazy bonding-time in the sun. Maybe some graceful Grant’s gazelle or zebra bounding away from the road or a couple of giraffe munching happily from the choicest acacia branches. For Tarangire specialities, look out for kudu and oryx.
Here as in other parks, it pays not to ignore the small animals. It’s so easy to be mesmerized by the power and majesty of an elephant or the elegance of the giraffe. Ask your guide to find you an agama lizard, especially a male one who changes colour in front of you according to the temperature! Or a hyrax, known as pimpi, an insignificant-looking creature of around 30cm in length…who astonishingly is related to elephant!
Not many trees will pass you by without something of avian interest catching your eye. A memorable flash of colour might be a lilac-breasted roller or Blue-eared Starling. Ostrich are plentiful and it’s hard not to chuckle at the sighting of the well-named, studious-looking secretary bird as it awkwardly pads across the grasslands.
The park is also famous for its splendid baobab trees, rolling savannah and acacia woodland. It can be dusty – wear a scarf over your mouth – but this is a minor inconvenience for sighting wildlife in such abundance.
DAY 3 Tarangire – Lake Manyara
Journey: Tarangire National Park -Lake Manyara
After our exhilarating morning walking safari in Tarangire, we will travel from there to Lake Manyara, where we will take lunch, enjoy an afternoon game drive and spend the night. Our travel time is around 2 ½ hours.
Day’s Highlight
Your walking safari in Tarangire, with its incredible diversity, massive baobab trees, herds of elephants and much, much more.
Walking Safari in Tarangire
Up close and personal: that could be the motto for a walking safari, and Tarangire is a fantastic location to leave the comfort of your safari vehicle and enjoy the landscape on foot. With a Park Ranger for safety and accompanied by your expert driver-guide, you will be amazed at how much more you can learn from a couple of hours walking in the bush. The great unknown, of course, is what you will see…and who you might meet! Your senses are challenged and heightened, with unfamiliar sounds and smells meeting you throughout your journey. You’ll find out about animal tracks and dung, learn what to do if you get too close to a grazing elephant and discover who lives in those emblematic, strange-shaped termite mounds (and it’s not just termites, far from it!) Being this close to nature may be a whole new experience for you, but the memories will stay with you forever – of that we are sure.
After the walking safari, we depart for Lake Manyara, where we will have lunch before our afternoon game drive. We will also spend the night there.
Safari (Game Drive) in Lake Manyara National Park
After our lunch, we jump in our vehicle to cover the highlights of this park. Set against the rugged Rift Valley escarpment, and characterised by its shimmering lake, Manyara is rich in vegetation and the wildlife that thrives here. Enjoy the tranquillity as majestic pink flamingos wade elegantly, picking out a meal of algae from the shallow, alkaline waters. On land, Manyara’s terrain is compact, yet boasts differing environments such as diverse forests fed by waters seeping from the nearby escarpment. Monkeys are abundant, but look out too for the lions, giraffe, warthog and grumpy Cape buffalo who all call this park ‘home’. Hold your nose when we reach the hippo pool, because these big lumps smell!
DAY 4 Lake Manyara – Ngorongoro
Journey: Lake Manyara to Ngorongoro
After lunch, our afternoon journey will lead us north-west to Ngorongoro, a journey of around 2 hours, but first we have the excitement of spending time on a walking safari in beautiful Lake Manyara National Park. With its dramatic escarpment, lush forest – and, of course, its lake – this is a place rich in wildlife.
Day’s Highlight
Your walking safari in wonderful Lake Manyara National Park, with the Rift Valley escarpment and the shimmering lake itself as the wonderful, natural backdrops.
Lake Manyara Walking Safari
Our morning walking safari gets you very quickly into the safari mood. Accompanied by a park ranger, you will be so close to Mother Nature, discovering wonders too small to see from a 4x 4 vehicle. Perhaps your guide and ranger will explain the importance of the rhino-horned dung beetle or exchange bird calls with the sulphur-breasted bull shrike. Maybe you’ll taste a desert date, a popular snack for monkeys! And all the time, you’ll feel the tension that only a walking safari can bring: the desire to find large mammals conflicting with the need to stay safe!
In silence, in single file, you’ll make your way through the bush, perhaps stumbling across a giraffe chomping on high branches or a herd of elephants grazing gently. Don’t worry, your ranger is an expert: your safety is his chief concern.
After our walk – and, of course, our lunch – we set off to Ngorongoro where we will spend the night.
DAY 5 Ngorongoro Crater – Kilimanjaro International Airport
Journey: Ngorongoro – Kilimanjaro International Airport
After our morning visit to the incomparable crater – see below – and then lunch, we will have a 4-hour journey, covering the 250km back to Kilimanjaro International Airport.
Day’s Highlight
Like nothing else on Earth, the stunning crater of Ngorongoro is a unique home for many, many species of Tanzania’s wildlife. With some luck, you may even see a black rhino here.
Safari in Ngorongoro Crater
From our accommodation, we set off after breakfast, a 6 am departure to reach the rim and then descend into the vast crater itself. At one side there’s the Lerai Forest, classic mountain forest landscape with almost tropical characteristics. This is a good elephant country, so keep your eyes peeled. By the side of the nearby swampland is what is sometimes called the ‘elephant graveyard’ as the mighty male tuskers at the end of their lives come to chew on the soft, swampland grasses once their teeth have failed them.
The crater has a population of around 120 lions, with well-defined territories; 15,000 wildebeest, 9,000 zebra, 400 hyenas, and around 50 black rhino. Many wildebeest and other herd animals are resident, benefiting from the many sources of year-round waters and are boosted by some migrators in season. Buffalo, Thomson’s gazelle and eland are also present in numbers. Hippos can be found in pools and swampland and highland birdlife is colourful and plentiful around the waters. Flamingos can often be seen in Lake Magadi, which occupies part of the crater floor.