5 Days/ 4 Night Big Cats Encounter Safari

Whatever your arrival time at Kilimanjaro International Airport, Fit4Masafa Travel driver-guide will be waiting for you with a warm welcoming smile. Kick back and relax in your comfortable vehicle as he takes you to your hotel in Arusha, Tanzania’s self-styled ‘safari capital.’ On your journey to the hotel, you will get a brief impression of this large, bustling, commercial city. Depending on your arrival time, you may have your pre-safari briefing today; if not, it will take place early tomorrow morning.

Unless your arrival time yesterday allowed time for your safari briefing, then this will take place after breakfast. We will provide you with all the essential information, before we set off westwards to our first safari destination, Lake Manyara National Park. Along the tour, you will stop at Mto wa Mbu for morning cultural tour which will be accompanied with hot local lunch, and the afternoon game drives into Lake Manyara NP. The park with its shallow alkaline lake is known for its over 400 bird species, primate-filled forests (look out for the long-tailed Guenon monkeys) and grassy plains. A large area of the park is covered by the alkaline Lake Manyara which is home to colonies of flamingos and other water birds. Apart from elephants, you might also spot giraffes, hippos, wildebeests and impalas while the forests near the lake are teeming with noisy groups of monkeys and baboons. From the pop-up roof of the safari vehicle you will be able to absorb the sights and sounds of nature. In the late evening you will leave the Lake Manyara National Park and head to Pamoja Africa Lodges in Karatu where you will spend the night.

After breakfast, your safari continues towards Serengeti NP, via the beautiful high lying farmland of Karatu and the Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority (NCAA). Leaving the highlands behind, you will travel into the heart of wild Africa You will arrive in time for picnic lunch and enjoy an afternoon game drive into the park.

After early breakfast at the lodge, you will have morning game drive in the park while heading to Ngorongoro Conservation area with packed lunch and game drive en-route. You will stopover at Olduvai Gorge, boasting with a history dating back to the dawn of time. It was here, that the anthropologists Drs. Lois and Mary Leakey discovered the skulls of ‘Nutcracker Man’ and ‘Handy Man’, both very significant links in the chain of human evolution. You will arrive in time for leisure, dinner and overnight at your lodge.

Enjoy breakfast, you will descend over 600 meters into the crater to view wildlife for a full day crater tour with picnic lunch down into the crater, This is the world’s largest caldera, a feature formed by the collapse of land after a volcanic eruption. It is approximately 18 km in diameter and home to about 25,000 mammals. In this relatively small area you can find almost all the mammals of East Africa ranging from Grant’s and Thomson’s gazelles to mountain reedbucks in the forests on the slopes. You might also see spotted hyenas, rare wild dogs and some of the more than 500 bird species of the area. It is also possible to spot the Big Five – lion, elephant, buffalo, rhino and leopard – in the few hours spent in the crater. Later on, drive back to Arusha arriving in time for drop off at the end of your African safari adventure at Arusha Airport or any other place in Arusha.