Overview
We created this safari to bring you up close to the wonders of Tanzania… wonders like the Ngorongoro Crater, the world’s largest intact volcanic caldera, and a wildlife universe unto itself, cut off from the rest of Africa.
The Ndutu Area is the engine of the Great Wildebeest Migration – it’s where the millions of wildebeests and other grazers settle for the calving season, from December through March, giving birth to up to half a million newborns every winter.
Highlights
- 1 Night at Ngorongoro Conservation Area - Tanzania
- 2 Nights at Ndutu Area- Tanzania
- 1 Night at Lake Manyara National Park - Tanzania
Itinerary
Meal Plan: Lunch, Dinner
07:30 Your driver/guide will pick you up from your Arusha area hotel, airport, or Arusha area residence with your own private 4 x 4 safari Jeep. Jump in and we’ll head for Ngorongoro Crater.
Standing at the crater’s rim, you’ll take in the awesome view of the great blue/green expanse spread out before you, inviting your discovery.
Our 4 x 4 Jeep will take us down the steep crater walls to a land of incredible exploration – lions, leopards, giraffes, elephants, buffalo, hippos, pink flamingoes, and more!
We’ll spend an incredible day here, enjoying this universe of over 25,000 varied animals on the crater’s floor – a mixture of plains, marsh, and wooded forest.
Then toward late afternoon, we will ascend back up to the crater’s rim to catch one of the area’s blazing sunsets.
We’ll spend the evening at our Ngorongoro safari lodge or tented camp.
Meal Plan: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner
This morning if we’re lucky we just might catch a glorious sunrise at the crater’s rim. Then we’re on our way to the Ndutu Area. But first, we’ll make a stop at Olduvai Gorge, perhaps the world’s most important paleoanthropological site. The deep ravines of Olduvai, have brought forth a treasure of early man’s fossilized remnants and tools, giving us an invaluable record of our ancient history.
Ndutu is famous for its incredibly fluctuating wildlife population – especially from December to May. The first few months of the year are known as the calving season when up to 8,000 newborn wildebeest, zebra, and gazelle drop onto these rich, green fields every day.
But no matter what time of year you visit Ndutu, you can’t miss the thousands of resident animals, all the big cats, giraffes, buffalo, elephants, monkeys, baboons and so many others.
You’ll spend the first of two nights at your Ndutu Area accommodation.
Meal Plan: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner
This will be a special day, a time when we can get to know the numbers and variety of Ndutu’s grazers and predators. Today, we can go on as many game drives as we want.
If you’re here during the calving season, you’ll witness thousands of wildebeests and their young. It’s an incredible scene of first steps and the baying of countless baby animals. Their mothers protecting them from the advances of the many predators drawn to the vulnerable newborns.
Later in the spring, the youngsters are big enough to join the adult animals as they start herding north, in the formation of the Great Migration.
There will also be plenty of animals that make their home here, year-round. Plus, the region is especially rich in birdlife.
We will spend our second evening at our Ndutu Area safari lodge or tented camp.
Meal Plan: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner
From the great plains of Ndutu, we head for the compact jewel of a park that awaits us at Lake Manyara. Though the reserve is not large, we will make discoveries of giraffes, elephants, wildebeests, impala, monkeys, warthogs, and an immense number of baboons.
But that’s just the beginning. The lake itself is a trove of fascinating birdlife – everything from cormorants to storks, spoonbills, egret, and flocked at the water’s edge, a fluttering carpet of bright pink flamingoes.
More surprises? Leopards and sometimes up in the acacia branches overhead, the park’s famous tree-climbing lions! And butterflies – hundreds of species filling the air about you with their fluttering comings and goings.
We will spend the evening at our Lake Manyara safari lodge or tented camp.
Meal Plan: Breakfast, Lunch
It’s our final day on safari so what do you say we take a spin around the beautiful park to discover that last elephant, warthog, or baboon? Perhaps we’ll see a tree-climbing lion…
Then we’ll head back to Arusha and along the way, stop to admire the scenery and break for lunch.
We will have you back at your Arusha hotel, residence, the airport, or another place of your choosing in the afternoon.
We promised you the wonders of Tanzania, from volcanic craters to the calving fields to the dense wild and birdlife at Lake Manyara.
We hope we’ve filled you with exciting and lasting memories of your five days in our unmatched natural world of an African safari. We at Hidaya Africa Tours & Travel so appreciate your time and your trust.
Cost
Includes
- Transport in a customized pop up top 4 x 4 land cruiser jeep.
- Meals and accommodation on safari as indicated on the program
- All applicable park entry & Crater service fees
- Picnic Lunch or hot Lunch in Arusha depending on the onward program
- Government levies & taxes
- Applicable Concession Fees
Excludes
- Drinks and Bottled water in the lodges and during all the mentioned meals
- All items of a personal nature like telephone/fax bills, bar bills, laundry etc
- Visa entry fees currently at $50pp easily obtainable upon arrival at the border entry point
- Travel/baggage/Medical Insurance
- Flying Doctors coverage available at an extra $35 per person
- The flying doctors medical, emergency and rescue cover
- Gratuities to Safari guides & hotel staff
- Any other item which is not mentioned in the “Inclusions” clause above.