Tribes and Landscapes of Tanzania

Day 1 - Arusha - Mto Wa Mbo – Lake Eyasi

Breakfast at the hotel and departure for Mto Wa Mbo. Upon arrival, a guided bicycle tour will take you through the last town that rises on the edge of the most famous national parks in Tanzania, meeting with the local population, visiting the production of beer, private homes, the market, banana plantations. Lunch based on typical local Tanzanian dishes will be served in a private house during the excursion. Continue to Lake Eyasi, located south-east of the Ngorongoro plateau. Upon arrival, meeting with the members of the Datoga tribe, polygamous farmers originating from the Horn of Africa, who arrived in this region following their herds in search of green pastures. Visit the village and the blacksmith's workshop who produces everyday objects, jewelry and arrowheads with ancient techniques for the neighboring Hadzabe, who repay him with animal skins and wild honey. At the end transfer to the lodge for dinner and overnight.

Day 2 - Lake Eyasi – Ngorongoro Crater

Wake up call very early in the morning and departure for the visit of the Hadzabe tribe - the bushmen, last heirs of a civilization that does not know agriculture, livestock farming, ceramics and metallurgy. They live by hunting with bow and arrows and by collecting wild berries and fruits. They are the last heirs of the homines sapientes who took their first steps right here, along the Rift Valley, about 200,000 years ago. Their lifestyle has remained unchanged for millennia, they live in small wandering groups of about twenty individuals. Meeting them is a very interesting experience and you will have the opportunity to experience first hand the experience of going on a hunting trip and experiencing an archaic lifestyle for a few hours, returning to the camp from hunting for a packed breakfast.

After breakfast departure for the Ngorongoro Crater. Upon arrival we will descend into the caldera for the game drive, lunch will be a picnic inside the park. At sunset we leave the park and arrive at the lodge, which rises directly on the ridge of the crater with an incomparable view of the caldera. Dinner and overnight stay.

It is estimated that the formation of the crater dates back about two million years and that it may have reached a height similar to that of Kilimanjaro, then collapsed inwards and gave rise to the current conformation. The structure of the crater is circular, with about 20 kilometers in diameter. The climate also differs in this place: while on the edge, which is about 2,200 meters high, the climate is cold and often foggy, inside the caldera the air is hot and dry and the vegetation changes rapidly depending on the season. The population of lions inside the caldera is unparalleled in all of Africa, a photographic safari in Ngorongoro is a unique and unrepeatable experience.

Day 3 - Ngorongoro Crater - Serengeti

Breakfast at the lodge and departure for the most famous park in Africa: the Serengeti National Park! Arrival at the park entrance in the early afternoon and first game drive. Picnic lunch, at sunset transfer to the tented camp located inside the park, dinner and overnight stay.

Serengeti National Park represents one of the main tourist attractions of the country and is the most famous of the protected areas of East Africa. Here you can see the Big Five: elephant, lion, leopard, black rhino and buffalo. The park was declared a World Heritage Site by the UNESCO in 1981 and is estimated to be home to 1.5 million wildebeest, 300,000 zebras, 150,000 gazelles, 3,000 lions and 1,360 elephants. Nowhere else in the world can you see such a convergence of herbivores. The type of vegetation characteristic of the Serengeti, the open savannah, facilitates sightings and it is for this reason that unrivaled game drives are possible here.

Day 4 - Serengeti

Breakfast at the tented camp, full day dedicated to game drives in the Serengeti Park. Picnic lunch in the park and, at sunset, return to the camp. Dinner and overnight stay.

Day 5 - Serengeti - Lake Natron

Breakfast at the tented camp and departure for the Lake Natron region. We follow a scenic track that crosses a valley flanked by volcanic peaks until reaching Lake Natron sometime after lunch. Picnic lunch during the transfer. In the afternoon, excursion along the Engare Sero stream that flows in a narrow rocky gorge, up to a beautiful waterfall where it is possible to swim. At sunset arrival at the lodge/tented camp, dinner and overnight.

About fifty kilometers long and about 25 wide, Lake Natron is a heavily alkaline lake that occupies a depression created by the Rift Valley, in a region of ruggedly beautiful lava desert in the far north of Tanzania. Lake Natron is the usual nesting area for millions of pink flamingos which, greedy for the cyanobacteria present in very high concentration in the lake waters, especially during the dry season (June-October), crowd its banks. The extremely arid area is dominated by the perfect cone of Oldoinyo Leng'ai, the volcano sacred to the Masai people who consider it the home of the God Leng'ai. With an altitude of almost 3000 m, the Oldoinyo Leng'ai is the only volcano in the world to emit natro-carbonitic lava, rich in sodium carbonate, with very low viscosity and temperature, since it gushes between 500 and 590 ° C. During the lava emissions, this appears as a kind of very fluid, dark-colored "river", which some have compared to a flow of mud; after the emission, upon contact with water, the natro-carbonitic lava changes rapidly towards the white color, making the summit of the volcano seem cloaked in snow.

Day 6 - Lake Natron - Tarangire

Breakfast at the lodge/tented camp and departure very early in the morning to get to the lake by jeep, then continue on foot to the shores of Lake Natron, through a harsh and almost lunar landscape to see in addition to the shining landscape the numerous pink flamingos that populate the lake. It is not a difficult trek, but you will walk through shallow water at times (which rarely reaches knee height): it is therefore reccomended to wear a shorts or swim trunks and non-slip shoes. At the end of the visit, departure for the Tarangire Park, picnic lunch and stop for a visit at a coffee plantation in the Karatu area. In the evening arrival at the tented lodge, dinner and overnight.<br/><br/>

Giorno 7 - Tarangire - Arusha

Breakfast at the tented lodge and early departure for a day of game drives in Tarangire National Park. Picnic lunch in the park and, in the evening, exit from the park and departure towards Arusha. Arrival at the lodge and overnight. Tarangire National Park is located at 1100 meters above sea level, has an extension of 2600 square km and is commonly called the 'Park of the Giants'. In this park you will have the opportunity to see numerous Baobab trees, typical of this area of ​​Tanzania, and many elephants. In addition to these two species there will be the opportunity to meet zebras, wildebeest, alcelafi, minor kudu, dikdik, numerous species of gazelles, buffaloes, giraffes, elephants, cheetahs and, of course, lions.

Day 8 - Departure

Breakfast at the hotel and transfer to the airport based on your flight schedule. Check-in and departure to either your home country or for a beach holiday

For organizational reasons, the order of visits to the parks may undergo variations without altering their contents

Map of the Parks and Conservation Areas of Tanzania!
Click on the map to enlarge it

Important!

The travel itineraries that AfriSafaris has created will allow you to enjoy the beauties of Tanzania and make the most of your time.
The programs can however be customized: they can be entered for the nights before and after the safari based on your needs and flight schedules, or you can add nights in a specific area if you wish to learn more about a particular park than a other.
The safari itinerary can include lodge and / or tented camps of various categories, from 3 *** to 5 *****, inside or outside the parks, or a mixture of the various types and categories, according to your wishes and your budget!
We can also take care of intercontinental flights, domestic flights, travel insurance and sea holidays in Zanzibar and other islands!