Serengeti Great Adventure Big Cats Safari

Arrive anytime at Kilimanjaro International Airport (JRO). Burigi Safaris will arrange a private transfer from the Airport to Moshi at the Park View Hotel, where the rest of the day is at leisure. We stay at the Park View Hotel, which is beautifully located on the slope of Mt. Kilimanjaro and is a perfect place to prepare for your adventure.
We will gather in the evening at the hotel for a pre-safari briefing and an equipment check.

Village walks, guided waterfall hike, coffee tours, local primary schools visit Chagas traditional dance, traditional Chagas local food, cooking classes, banana beer experience, and the unique view of Mount Kilimanjaro.

Today we drive to Tarangire National Park, for excellent game viewing. Tarangire is a small park that offers some excellent sights. Generally, in the dry seasons, Tarangire comes alive as wildlife and birdlife congregate on the Tarangire River, which is a permanent source of water. We spend the night in our lodge beautifully set outside the park with stunning views and a unique atmosphere of great rift valley wall escapement near the Ngorongoro Crater.

In the morning clients will join the Hadzabe and interact with them, and learn so many stuff like how to make fire by using two dry sticks, the way which has been used for thousands of years. The Bushmen will teach them how to use their bow and arrows, collecting some tubers, roots, and fruits with the women or join the men on hunting. Hunting is done in the morning; clients will follow the hunters behind and see how the hunting is done. The honey gathering is part of it, but depending on the season as the honey gathering is done in the rainy season. Join on Hadzabe tribal dance. Here the tour may take 3 to 4 hours

We head towards the Serengeti National Park. En route, there is an opportunity to visit Olduvai Gorge. It is within this steep-sided ravine that Louis and Mary Leakey made some of the world’s most important archaeological discoveries in the 1950s. Here is a small museum we are able to see evidence of our ancestors that have been dated back 2.5 million years. After lunch, we drive into the Serengeti itself and the rest of the afternoon is spent game viewing in the vast plains that are broken only by stands of acacia trees and the occasional kopje. In December, January and February we will normally meet the migration with large herds of wildebeest, zebra, and gazelle. There are always plenty of resident animals, such as giraffe, buffalo, and elephant, and many large predators such as lion, cheetah, and leopard. We return to our special tented camp for the night.

We have another full day in this wonderful park, rising early to make the most of our time. Our guides will choose the best spotting locations for the time of year; we can spend time at the Hippo pool watching these majestic animals laze about in the cool water happily living alongside the crocodiles, watch a big pride of lions, be in the middle of the migration, sometimes surrounded by wildebeest, sometimes by zebras, which travel with the wildebeest. We journey from the wide-open plains to the kopjes: these volcanic rocky outcrops provide protection and shelter for a wide variety of animals and from the top, we can look out across the vast grasslands of the Serengeti. This diverse and interesting landscape will provide us with the ultimate in game viewing, we will hopefully see all of the plain games; elephants, giraffe, zebra, wildebeest, lions and if you are lucky the elusive leopard and cheetah, as well as huge amounts of the interesting birdlife, from the elegant secretary birds to the flightless ostrich. We return to our special tented camp for the night.

We start the day with an early morning game drive before heading to Ngorongoro Conservation Area. Ngorongoro is a special place in that it is a Conservation Area, not a National Park; this means that the whole area is managed for both the animals and the local Masai people who graze their cattle alongside the indigenous wildlife. During the drive-in Ngorongoro, we have a chance to glimpse something of the Masai way of life. After stopping at the entrance gate, where there is a chance to learn more about this fascinating volcanic landscape, we will drive around the rim of the Crater itself, and from here we can look down and see the herd of wildebeest or buffalos. Finally, we descend into the crater. The crater walls provide a natural sanctuary for the animals, which means there is plenty to see: lions, elephants, buffalo, rhino, and leopard (if you are lucky). The only animal you won’t see here is a giraffe, whose long legs are unable to cope with the steeps sides of the crater. In the late afternoon, we travel back to our special tented camp.

Today we will descend 2000 feet (over 600 meters) to the floor of the Ngorongoro Crater for your crater tour. Here we will explore the forest areas inhabited by monkeys and elephants, the lake area, where we may see flamingos. We will also visit the open savannah where the lions hunt. Picnic lunch will be served in the crater. In the late afternoon, we make a short journey to Karatu.

We depart from your tented lodge in Karatu and proceed to Lake Manyara National Park. Although small in size, this park is one of the most diverse reserves in the country. Lake Manyara covers two-thirds of the park. At the backdrop is the wall of the Great Rift Valley, before which lies the groundwater forest, areas of open grassland near the lake foreshore, and the Soda Lake. We enjoy a picnic lunch in this area, which consists of open grassy areas, hot springs, dense woodlands, and steep mountainsides. Lake Manyara National Park is a birding paradise that has more than 350 species of bird. The park is also famed for its unique and elusive tree-climbing lions.
In the afternoon we drive back to Arusha.

The morning after breakfast we will make a short journey to Arusha town for shopping and visit the local Maasai market then drive straight to the airport for your evening flight.