This 05 days camping Tanzania safari will take you to the popular Ngorongoro Crater, featuring one of the highest concentrations of game in Africa. Here you will witness an amazing spectacle of African wildlife – inside a self-contained world teeming with animals. The tour will further take you to the Serengeti National Park, into the heart of wild Africa, a massive wilderness of 14500 square km, where everyday brings a new landscape and a new adventure. You will visit the Lake Manyara National Park, one of Tanzania’s most dramatically located wildlife areas, consisting of a shallow but huge soda lake, at the foot of the Great Rift Valley’s western escarpment.
Transit Time : 2½ hours
Distance: 130 km
Pick up from Arusha hotel and depart via the great rift valley to Lake Manyara national park.
We will arrive in time for lunch at the camp and after lunch do we head into the Lake Manyara National Park for an afternoon game drive. This national park is one of Tanzania’s most dramatically located wildlife areas, consisting of a massive but shallow soda lake (covering two-thirds of the park), located at the foot of the Great Rift Valley’s western escarpment. The park’s varied habitat attracts a wide variety of animals, including one of Africa’s largest concentrations of elephants, Lake Manyara’s unique tree-climbing lions, as well as large flocks of flamingos attracted by the algae in the lake.
Dinner and overnight at the PANORAMA CAMPSITE
Transit Time : 6 hours
Distance: 205 km
After breakfast we drive to the 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 – the 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, featuring the Seronera River, which provides a valuable water source to this area and therefore attracts wildlife well representative of most of the Serengeti’s species.
We arrive in time for lunch and enjoy an afternoon game drive in the Serengeti national park.
Dinner and overnight at the SERONERA CAMPSITE
We will proceed for an extended game viewing drive along the Sogore River Circuit, which loops into the plains south of the Seronera River, and which is good for possible Lion, Thomson gazelle, topi, ostrich and cheetah sightings. The Visitor Centre close to the Serengeti Seronera Lodge and public campsites, is well worth a visit in this day of game viewing. After picnic lunches you will follow the Kopjes Circuit, which goes anti-clockwise around the Maasai Kopjes, which usually attract a number of lion and some formidably large cobras. Kopjes are weathered granite outcrops, scattered around the plains, most of which are miniature ecosystems, providing shade and drinking water in pools left in the rock after the rains. This makes the kopjes particularly good for spotting wildlife in the dry seasons – including lions, which like to lie in wait for animals coming to drink!
Dinner and overnight at the SERONERA CAMPSITE
Transit Time : 4 hours
Distance: 145 km
After breakfast and final game viewing we will depart to Ngorongoro Conservation area. You will have an optional stopover at Olduvai Gorge, boasting with a history dating back to the dawn of time. It was here, that the anthropologists Drs. Lois and Mary Leakey discovered the skulls of ‘Nutcracker Man’ and ‘Handy Man’, both very significant links in the chain of human evolution.
We arrive at the conservation area in the evening and if time will allow you will have a nature walk on the crater rim.
Dinner and overnight at the SIMBA CAMPSITE
Transit Time : 4 hours
Distance: 190 km
After breakfast you will descend over 600 meters into the crater to view wildlife for a half day’s safari tour. Supported by a year round water supply and fodder, the Ngorongoro National Park supports a vast variety of animals, which include herds of wildebeest, zebra, buffalo, eland, warthog, hippo, and giant African elephants. Another big draw card to this picturesque national park, is it’s dense population of predators, which include lions, hyenas, jackals, cheetahs and the ever-elusive leopard, which sometimes requires a trained eye to spot. You will enjoy picnic lunches and later drive back to Arusha.