4-Day Serengeti and Ngorongoro Safari with Olduvai Gorge

• Arrive at Kilimanjaro International Airport, where you will be met at the arrival point with a signboard bearing your name. A pick-up transfer will then take you to Arusha Safari Lodge to prepare for your safari adventure.

• Gather at the hotel for a pre-safari briefing and an equipment check. We will also confirm that you have the appropriate mandatory medical coverage and travel insurance.

Dinner and overnight at Arusha Safari Lodge: Half board.

• Head towards Serengeti National Park.

• Enjoy en-route game drives, with an opportunity to visit Olduvai Gorge. Within this steep-sided ravine, Louis and Mary Leakey made some of the world's most important archaeological discoveries in the 1950s. There is also a small museum where we will be able to see evidence of our ancestors dating back more than 2.5 million years.

• After lunch, drive into the Serengeti plains and spend the rest of the afternoon game viewing in the vast plains, broken only by stands of acacia trees and the occasional kopje. We will normally meet the migration with large herds of wildebeest, zebra, and gazelle in December, January, and February. There are also plenty of resident animals here, such as giraffes, buffalo, elephants, and many large predators including lions, cheetahs, and leopards.

• Return to our special tented camp for the night.

Dinner and overnight at Serengeti Acacia Tented Camp: Full board.

• Enjoy a full day in this wonderful park, rising early to make the most of our time. Your Tanzanian guides will choose the best spotting locations for the time of year. We can spend time at the Hippo Pool watching these majestic animals laze in the cool water alongside crocodiles, watch a big pride of lions, and perhaps find ourselves in the middle of the migration, sometimes surrounded by wildebeest and sometimes by zebras, which travel with them.

• We journey from the wide-open plains to the kopjes. These volcanic rocky outcrops provide protection and shelter for a wide variety of animals, and from the top we can look out across the vast grasslands of the Serengeti. This diverse and interesting landscape provides the ultimate game viewing, and we will hopefully see plains game such as elephants, giraffes, zebras, wildebeest, and lions, and, if you are lucky, the elusive leopard and cheetah, as well as huge amounts of interesting birdlife, from the elegant secretary bird to the flightless ostrich.

• Return to our special tented camp for the night.

Dinner and overnight at Serengeti Acacia Tented Camp: Full board.

• After breakfast, depart for the Ngorongoro Crater, passing through the forested slopes of the Ngorongoro Crater Highlands before arriving at the crater rim.

• Descend into the crater, one of the most densely crowded game areas in the world and home to nearly 40,000 animals. Here, we will have a good chance of seeing the Big Five: lion, leopard, rare Black Rhino, buffalo, and elephant.

• We will also see huge herds of wildebeest, zebra, and Thomson's gazelle along with the Big Five.

• After a picnic lunch, we will continue our game drive and depart the crater area.

Dinner and overnight at Arusha Safari Lodge: Half board.