7 Days Big Five Tanzania Safari
Tours & Safaris Tanzania
Overview
Opening with a night at a charming Arusha coffee estate, this easy-paced tour ensures plenty of time to relax before your safari. Northern Tanzania’s top wildlife destinations are on the itinerary and your accommodation has been selected to show them at their very best. Activities include game drives, guided walks and spot-lit night drives; back at camp you stay in elegant tented suites with private bathrooms and sit down to candle-lit suppers.
Tarangire National Park sets the scene, a wild reserve of tangled woodland and enormous baobab trees – reputed in African folklore to have been planted upside down by hyenas. Kuro Tarangire provides the accommodation, a small and intimate tented camp that offers game drives as well as guided walking safaris – an unforgettable experience in Tarangire’s dry, peak season months from about June to October.
Your next destination is always in peak season when it comes to wildlife: the steep walls of the Ngorongoro Crater keep most of its big animals contained within it, resulting in spectacular game viewing at any time of year including almost guaranteed sightings of the Big 5 (lion, leopard, rhino, elephant and buffalo). Your accommodation perches on the rim itself, enjoying a remote setting to offer unfettered views of the Crater.
The tour ends with a flight to Tanzania’s showpiece: the Serengeti. Home to the majority of the annual Wildebeest Migration, the concentration of resident wildlife means amazing game viewing all year round. But it is the arrival of the thundering herds that bring most visitors to this reserve. Located in the productive northern Serengeti, Lamai Serengeti lies on the path of the Migration and between July and October delivers sensational game viewing, especially at the Mara River where the herds brave giant crocodiles as they cross. The tour ends with a flight back to Arusha’s Kilimanjaro International Airport.
Day By Day Itinerary
Explore A Day By Day Itinerary Below
Day 1: Relax in Arusha
The tour opens with your collection at Arusha Airport and a short transfer by road to Rivertrees Country Inn for a night. Situated in beautiful gardens ringing with birdsong, Rivertrees is the perfect place to relax after what may have been a long journey. Accommodation is in quiet riverside cottages and the menu features old-time favourites like lasagne and pizza as well as Swahili dishes and, since the lodge lies surrounded by coffee plantations, perhaps the freshest cup of coffee you will have had for a few days.
Days 2-3: Tented in Tarangire
You leave Rivertrees after breakfast with a picnic lunch packed safely away. The Rift Valley landscape drifts past as your guide heads for Tarangire National Park, the least visited reserve on the itinerary but one capable of delivering fantastic game viewing. Home to Tanzania’s biggest elephant population, Tarangire supports large numbers of buffalo, giraffe, zebra and many antelope species, most evident during the dry season when concentrations of animals at the life-giving Tarangire River are at their peak. Your accommodation – Kuro Tarangire – lies at the heart of it all. A small and intimate camp of just six tents, solar-powered Kuro Tarangire offers game drives by day and night as well as the chance to lace up your boots and explore on foot with your guide.
Days 4-5: Explore the Ngorongoro Crater
Leaving Tarangire, you gain altitude as you are driven north and into the Ngorongoro Highlands. A packed lunch sustains you on the way, and before long you check into Entamanu Ngorongoro, an eco-friendly tented camp that sits on the edge of the greatest of Rift Valley features: the Ngorongoro Crater. Enjoying a secluded north-western setting away from the rim’s larger lodges, Entamanu Ngorongoro maintains this safari’s intimate and exclusive theme: there are only six suites at camp, each with marvellously uninterrupted views from its private outdoor deck. The next day you sit back on a full day drive in the crater itself, on the lookout for Ngorongoro’s famous Big 5 as well as other animals ranging from hippos to hyenas. Back at camp you gather around a blazing log fire to ward off the highland chill and exchange safari stories as a delicious supper is prepared, served most usually under starlight.
Days 6-8: Prime Position in The Serengeti
The day begins with an early morning transfer to Lake Manyara airstrip and a flight to the Serengeti National Park and your accommodation: Lamai Serengeti. Enjoying an elevated setting on the Kogakuria Kopjes in the far north of the Serengeti, this luxurious retreat looks over the Mara River Valley and Lamai Wedge, both famously game-rich throughout the year. There is time to settle in and relax – the camp has a pool and sundeck – before you begin exploring the savannah. And with two full days here, you have plenty of time to take it all in. The area is home to abundant resident wildlife and its many predators – lion, cheetah, leopard, wild dog and crocodile – as well as excellent bird life. During migration season, the camp could not be in a better position. Lying directly on the migration path, the camp offers its guests sensational sightings of river crossings and predator/prey interactions, viewed from the safety of your specially-adapted 4X4 safari vehicle.
Day 9: The Journey Ends
After breakfast at Lamai Serengeti, you are transferred to the local airstrip for the flight back to Arusha’s Kilimanjaro International Airport where this safari ends and your onward connections commence.
