5-Day Tanzania Safari through Serengeti and Ngorongoro Crater

Pick up from Arusha by your driver/guide, then drive to Tarangire for a full-day game drive. You will spend the night at the lodge/camp.

Your destination in the park is located slightly off the main safari route. Tarangire National Park is a lovely, quiet park in Northern Tanzania that is most famous for its elephant migration, birding, and quiet authentic safari atmosphere. The majority of travelers to the region either miss out on Tarangire altogether or venture into the park for only a matter of hours, leaving parts of Tarangire virtually untouched.

The park is famous for its huge number of elephants, baobab trees, and tree-climbing lions. Visitors to the park can expect to see any number of resident zebras and wildebeests, in addition to less common animals. Other common animals include waterbuck, giraffe, and olive baboons. Dinner and overnight at Serian Tarangire Camp.

After breakfast at the camp, depart for Serengeti National Park via the Ndutu Area, where you will see the Great Migration.

Tanzania's oldest and most popular national park, also a World Heritage Site and recently proclaimed a 7th worldwide wonder, the Serengeti is famed for its annual migration, when some six million hooves pound the open plains as more than 200,000 zebra and 300,000 Thomson's gazelle join the wildebeest's trek for fresh grazing. Yet even when the migration is quiet, the Serengeti offers arguably the most scintillating game viewing in Africa: great herds of buffalo, smaller groups of elephant and giraffe, and thousands upon thousands of eland, topi, kongoni, impala, and Grant's gazelle. Dinner and overnight at Olkarien Eco Safari Lodge.

After breakfast, enjoy a full-day game drive in the central Serengeti, home to big cats such as lions, leopards, and cheetah. You will have a picnic lunch and then return to the camp for an evening campfire, shower, and overnight stay.

A million wildebeests... each one driven by the same ancient rhythm, fulfilling its instinctive role in the inescapable cycle of life: a frenzied three-week bout of territorial conquests and mating; survival of the fittest as 40 km (25 miles) long columns plunge through crocodile-infested waters on the annual exodus north; replenishing the species in a brief population explosion that produces more than 8,000 calves daily before the 1,000 km (600 miles) pilgrimage begins again. Dinner and overnight at Olkarien Eco Safari Lodge.

After breakfast, depart Serengeti and drive to Ngorongoro for a game drive in the Ngorongoro Crater. In the late afternoon, drive back to the lodge.

The jewel in Ngorongoro's crown is a deep volcanic crater, the largest unflooded and unbroken caldera in the world. About 20 kms across, 600 meters deep, and 300 sq km in area, the Ngorongoro Crater is a breathtaking natural wonder. We will visit Lake Magadi, a large but shallow alkaline lake in the southwestern corner, which is one of the main features of the crater. A large number of flamingos, hippos, and other water birds can usually be seen here. Dinner and overnight at Ngorongoro Lions Paw Camp.

Depart in the morning for a game drive at Lake Manyara National Park with a picnic lunch. Then in the evening, drive to Arusha and drop off at your hotel in Arusha, booked under your own arrangements.

Manyara provides the perfect introduction to Tanzania's birdlife. More than 400 species have been recorded, and even a first-time visitor to Africa might reasonably expect to observe 100 of these in one day. Inland from the floodplain, a narrow belt of acacia woodland is the favored haunt of Manyara's legendary tree-climbing lions and impressively tusked elephants.