7 Days: Exclusive Wildlife Experience

You're welcomed on arrival at Kilimanjaro International Airport and transferred to Arusha. With the warm, mostly dry weather typical of this time of year, it's an easy, relaxed start to your trip before the safari itself gets underway the following morning.
 

You're picked up from your hotel in Arusha and transferred to Tarangire National Park for your first game drives of the trip. Tarangire is known for its ancient baobab trees and elephant herds that remain in the park throughout the year, and the landscape is at its greenest during this season. You settle in at EcoScience Tented Camp for dinner and overnight.
 

You head to Lake Manyara National Park for a game drive through its groundwater forest, keeping an eye out for the park's tree-climbing lions and the many bird species drawn to the lake shore. After lunch, you transfer to your lodge in Karatu, with the rest of the afternoon free to relax before dinner and overnight at Ngorongoro Farm House.
 

An early start takes you into the Ngorongoro Crater for a morning game drive. Nearly three million years old, this ancient volcanic caldera is ringed by towering walls and shelters forests, grasslands, fresh springs and a large soda lake within its rim, home to a dense concentration of resident wildlife year-round. After lunch, you continue on to Serengeti National Park, with a game drive along the way as you make the gradual journey to Cherero Camp, roughly two hours from the hub of the Serengeti depending on driving conditions. Dinner and overnight at Cherero Camp.
 

For early risers, an optional hot air balloon ride over the Serengeti plains is available this morning at an additional cost of US$600 per person, with advance booking required. On the ground, you spend the day on morning and afternoon game drives through Central and Western Serengeti, home to the big five, lion, leopard, elephant, rhino and buffalo, along with hundreds of smaller, equally striking species, from lilac-breasted rollers to Charaxes butterflies and the umbrella thorn acacia trees scattered across the landscape.
 

You spend a second full day exploring Central and Western Serengeti with morning and afternoon game drives, giving you more time and a better chance to find the park's resident prides, elephant herds and the many smaller species that call this part of the Serengeti home.
 

After breakfast, you say goodbye to the team at Cherero Camp and enjoy a final game drive on your way to Seronera Airstrip for your morning departure flight. You fly back to Arusha, where lunch is available at your own expense, before a 90-minute road transfer to Kilimanjaro International Airport for your onward or international flight. If you'd like to extend your trip with time in Zanzibar, this can be arranged as well.