3-Day Tanzania Safari Itinerary

Your guide collects you from Arusha or Kilimanjaro International Airport and you head south toward Tarangire. The drive takes about two hours through Maasai countryside. On entering Tarangire, the landscape changes immediately — flat-topped acacia trees, vast golden savannah, and the distant blue-grey smudge of the Rift Valley escarpment. Settle into your lodge overlooking the Tarangire River, then head out for a late-afternoon game drive. The elephants are usually already moving toward the water.

Tarangire is dramatically underappreciated. While tourists queue at the Serengeti's crowded sighting points, Tarangire holds over 3,000 elephants — East Africa's largest concentration — plus lions, leopards, giraffes, zebras, and more than 550 bird species. The park is dominated by ancient baobab trees, some over 1,000 years old. Spend the full day inside the park with picnic lunch by the river. Your guide knows where the elephants drink, where lions rest in the long grass, and where the elusive aardvark hides.

An early departure gets you to the Ngorongoro gate at first light. You descend 600 metres into the crater as dawn breaks over the caldera floor — 100 square miles of unbroken wildlife habitat holding 25,000 large animals. Lions, hyenas, elephants, buffalo, hippos, flamingos on the lake, and the endangered black rhino are all residents. A picnic lunch beside the hippo pool, watching hippos blow and splash, is one of Tanzania's great wilderness experiences. Ascend in the late afternoon and return to Arusha.