Bush to Beach Treasures of Tanzania - 14 Days

When you land at Kilimanjaro International Airport, our friendly staff meet and welcome you and transfer you to Arusha for your overnight stay at Mount Meru Hotel on a bed and breakfast basis. It’s a calm first evening to rest before the safari begins.

After breakfast you drive unhurriedly to Tarangire National Park, a park of about 2,850 sq km famous for its large numbers of elephants, ancient baobab trees and, if you’re lucky, tree-climbing pythons. You have lunch at your lodge and head out for an afternoon game drive, the first of your wildlife days. Tarangire is home to giraffe, impala, eland and zebra, and predators including lion and leopard, with over 550 bird species recorded. The Tarangire River is the main source of fresh water for wildlife in the dry season, when animals concentrate along its banks. You spend two nights in the park at either Tarangire Tree Tops or Swala Camp (one of the two, subject to availability) on a full board basis. Swala Camp offers an exclusive safari experience in a landscape of baobabs, elephants and birdlife, and is built to high eco-friendly standards with a low carbon footprint.

After breakfast you drive from your lodge to Lake Manyara National Park for a game drive. This park combines a freshwater lake, groundwater forest, marshes and a rift escarpment, and at certain times of the year the lake shore turns pink with flamingos. More than 390 bird species have been recorded, including ostriches, egrets, herons, pelicans, storks, spoonbills and ibises, and you may also see hippos and baboons. Baobab trees with huge trunks grow on the escarpment slopes. You spend the night at Lake Manyara Tree Lodge, the only permanent luxury lodge in the park and known for its romantic stilted tree house suites shaded by a mahogany forest.

After breakfast you drive from Manyara to the Ngorongoro Crater and descend to the crater floor for game viewing. This UNESCO World Heritage Site is the world’s largest inactive, intact and unfilled volcanic caldera, with cliffs about 600 m high dropping to a crater floor of around 260 sq km. You may see everything from elephant and lion to, if you’re lucky, the endangered black rhino, all among large herds of zebra and wildebeest. Lunch is served in the crater. In the late afternoon you climb back up to the rim for your overnight stay at Ngorongoro Crater Lodge.

After breakfast you drive to Serengeti National Park through the Ngorongoro Conservation Area and past Olduvai Gorge, a steep-sided ravine about 50 km long that is one of the world’s most important prehistoric sites. The Serengeti covers about 14,763 sq km of grassland plains and savannah, riverine forest and woodlands, in the north of Tanzania, where it joins the Masai Mara National Reserve in Kenya. You spend the night at Serengeti Under Canvas, Four Seasons Safari Lodge Serengeti or Pioneer Luxury Camp (one of the three, subject to availability).

You have two full days of game viewing across the endless Serengeti plains. The park is best known for the annual migration, thousands upon thousands of animals, particularly wildebeest, as far as the eye can see, with a population estimated at around 1.5 million. The herds follow the rains, so their position depends on the time of year, and from the end of June, when the dry season begins, they start to move in search of fresh grazing. The Serengeti is also famous for cheetahs, leopards and lions, some of which follow the herds while others remain on the central plain. You return each evening to your camp or lodge for dinner and overnight.

After breakfast you transfer to Seronera airstrip for a scheduled flight to Zanzibar. You’re met on arrival and transferred to your beach hotel for dinner and an overnight stay at Baraza Resort & Spa Zanzibar.

You spend five nights in total at this five-star boutique resort, resting and relaxing on the island. Water sports and excursions can be arranged on request at an extra charge. Baraza sits along Bwejuu-Paje beach and has just 30 villas, in a fully inclusive resort that evokes the heritage of Zanzibar from the era of the Sultans. The design is a fusion of Arabic, Swahili and Indian styles, with Swahili arches, intricate hand-carved decor, antiques, handmade furniture and brass lanterns, so the stay feels like a different world from the bush.

After breakfast you have a relaxed day at leisure, then in the late morning you transfer from your hotel to Zanzibar Airport to catch your flight to Dar es Salaam for your onward flight home.