In Six Days

Your guide meets you in the arrivals hall at Kilimanjaro International Airport, runs through the plan for the week and loads your bags into the Land Cruiser you will use for the whole trip.

The drive west to Arusha takes about an hour, past banana farms and small roadside markets, with Mount Meru ahead of you. The rest of the day is free to rest at a small guest house on the edge of town.

An early breakfast, then you climb through the forest on the rim of the Ngorongoro Crater and down the far side, past Maasai herders and their cattle. The trees fall away and the short-grass plains of the Serengeti open up in every direction.

The drive to the central Serengeti takes about four hours, but it is a game drive most of the way. You stop for lunch at Naabi Hill gate, then head for the Seronera area, where lions rest on the granite kopjes and cheetahs hunt the open grass. You reach camp before dark.

You leave the Serengeti after breakfast and drive about three hours back to the crater highlands. At the rim you take the steep road down the 600-metre wall into the Ngorongoro Crater, a sunken world of grass, swamp and a shallow soda lake.

The crater floor is packed with animals: buffalo, zebra, wildebeest, hyena and lion, flamingos on Lake Magadi and, if you are lucky, a black rhino out on the open grass. Lunch is a picnic by the hippo pool. In the afternoon you climb out and drive half an hour back to your lodge in Karatu.