The Crater

Your driver-guide meets you at Kilimanjaro International Airport and gives you a short introduction to the trip on the hour’s drive to Arusha.

Your first night is at Elewana Arusha Coffee Lodge, set in a working coffee plantation, or at the more private Hamerkop House. Take the afternoon to rest after the flight.

Today is a travelling day with game along the way, about four hours in all. The road climbs to the Ngorongoro Crater rim, with a view down into the crater, then drops through Maasai grazing land to the short-grass plains and Naabi Hill Gate, a good place for your picnic lunch.

In the afternoon you drive into the central Serengeti around Seronera. The Seronera River is one of the best places in Tanzania for leopards, which rest in the sausage trees and acacias along it. Lions use the granite kopjes and cheetahs hunt on the open plains. If you travel between about April and June or in November and December, the migration herds may be passing through.

A short drive down the escarpment takes you to Lake Manyara National Park. After the open plains of the last two days, this park feels very different: tall forest fed by springs, busy with baboons and blue monkeys, then a wide lakeshore with hippos, buffalo and waterbirds.

Lions here sometimes climb into the acacias, although it is not seen every visit. You have a picnic lunch in the park, then drive about three hours back to Arusha, where the tour ends.