5-Day Tanzania Big Five Camping Safari through Serengeti and Ngorongoro

After breakfast, your driver-guide will be ready at your hotel to pick you up and head into Tarangire National Park for a game drive. The park has great landscapes, including plains known as the "small Serengeti" and the Tarangire River, which acts as a major magnet for animals during the dry season.

Its natural vegetation mainly consists of acacia woodland and giant African baobab trees, with huge swamp areas in the south. Tarangire National Park is reputed to contain some of the largest elephant herds in Africa. This African national park is also home to three rare species of animals - the greater kudu, the fringed-eared oryx, as well as a few ashy starlings.

The park also offers large numbers of buffaloes, zebras, wildebeest, giraffes, lions, cheetahs, leopards, impalas, gazelles, warthogs, and wild dogs, which are occasionally seen. It is also enriched with birdlife, with more than 400 species.

During the lunch hour, we will stop at a picnic site for lunch and continue with the game drive until evening, when we drive to the camp for an overnight stay.

Non-game-viewing travel time: 4 hours

Distance: 242 km.

After breakfast, we exit Tarangire and head towards Serengeti National Park via the beautiful high-lying farmland of Karatu and the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. Leaving the highlands behind, we descend into the heart of wild Africa - Serengeti National Park - with its endless plains rolling into the distance as far as the eye can see.

We head to the central park area, known as the Seronera area, one of the richest wildlife habitats in the park. It features the Seronera River, which provides a valuable water source to this area and therefore attracts wildlife representative of most of the Serengeti's species.

We arrive in time for lunch and enjoy an afternoon game drive in Serengeti National Park.

Dinner and overnight at Tumbili public camps.

This day will be spent on a game drive in the Serengeti. The areas that you visit will depend upon where the migrating herds are, as predators usually follow closely behind the trekking animals.

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 up central Serengeti, while from July to October they are in North Serengeti.

The yearly trek is determined by the rainfall, and the location of the herds might vary from year to year, but your guide will know where to find the animals and where to see them best. Apart from wildebeests and zebras, you will also spot predators such as lions, leopards, and cheetahs, as well as all of the Big Five.

Dinner and overnight at Tumbili public campsite.

After breakfast, we continue with a game drive until lunchtime. After lunch, we head to Ngorongoro for an overnight stay.

On the way, we can experience Maasai traditional life and learn a little about the lives of these cultural people in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area.

Dinner and overnight at Simba Campsite.

After an early breakfast, we will descend over 600 meters into the crater for a game drive on a half-day safari tour. Supported by a year-round water supply and fodder, Ngorongoro National Park supports a vast variety of animals, including herds of wildebeest, zebra, buffalo, eland, warthog, hippo, and giant African elephants.

Another big draw of this picturesque national park is its dense population of predators, which includes lions, hyenas, jackals, cheetahs, and the ever-elusive leopard, which sometimes requires a trained eye to spot. This is also the park where you can more easily see black rhino than in many other parks.

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 and acts as a home for flamingos and hippos. Apart from the animals, the park has a wonderful landscape and a very beautiful caldera. We will have lunch at the picnic site.

In the afternoon, after lunch, we depart the crater and drive back to Arusha.

Hotel is on a bed and breakfast basis.