12 Days Tanzania Safari Holidays and Zanzibar Beach Tour

Your trip starts when you land at Zanzibar's Abeid Amani Karume Airport. A member of our team will be waiting past the arrivals hall to meet you, run through the plan for the days ahead and answer any early questions. From there it is a road transfer up to the north of the island, roughly an hour and a half depending on traffic through the villages, to Kendwa on the far tip.

Kendwa faces west, so it is one of the few beaches on the island where the tide stays deep enough to swim through the day and where the sun drops straight into the sea in the evening. There is nothing on the schedule once you arrive. Most people are tired from the flights, so the plan is simple: settle into your room, feel the pace slow down and let the heat and the sound of the water do their work.

If you have energy left, the beach is a few steps away and the water is warm well into the night. Dinner is served at the hotel. You spend the night at Kendwa Rocks Hotel.

After a relaxed breakfast you head down to Stone Town, the old heart of Zanzibar City and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. A local guide walks you through the tight lanes on foot, which is really the only way to see the place. The streets were built narrow for shade, so you move from bright squares into cool alleys and back again, past coral stone houses leaning close overhead.

Along the way you see the carved wooden doors the town is known for, each one studded and framed to show the standing of the family behind it. Your guide fills in the harder history too, including the old slave market site and the cathedral built over it, plus the former sultan's palace and the seafront forts. It is a town that made its money from cloves, ivory and trade winds, and that past sits in plain view.

You will have time to browse the shops for spices, kanga cloth and silver, and to stop for a coffee. In the late afternoon you drive back north. Dinner and your overnight are at Kendwa Rocks Hotel.

Today fills out with two of the island's best known outings. After breakfast you drive inland to a working spice farm, the reason Zanzibar earned the name Spice Island. A farm guide leads you between the plants and hands you leaves, bark, roots and pods to smell and taste as you go, cloves and nutmeg, cinnamon, cardamom, black pepper, vanilla and tropical fruit picked straight off the branch.

From the farm you carry on to the coast and take a short boat ride out to Prison Island, also called Changuu. The island was once meant to hold prisoners and later served as a quarantine station, but people visit now for the giant Aldabra tortoises kept in a pen there. Some of them are well over a hundred years old, and you can walk among them and feed them leaves. There is clear water off the island for a swim or a snorkel before you head back.

By late afternoon you return to the boat and then to your vehicle for the drive north. Dinner is at the hotel and you spend the night at Kendwa Rocks Hotel.

This is a full day on the water. After breakfast you transfer south to the fishing village of Fumba, where you board a traditional dhow, the wooden sailing boat that has worked these waters for centuries. The crew raise the sail and take you out into Menai Bay, a protected stretch of reefs, sandbars and small islands off the southwest coast.

The day is built around stops. You anchor over the reef for snorkeling in warm, clear water full of reef fish, then move on to a sandbar that appears at low tide where you can wade and swim. Lunch is a spread of grilled seafood served on one of the islands, usually with fresh fruit to finish. Between stops the crew often sail past a stand of mangroves and, tide allowing, a natural lagoon.

As the wind shifts in the afternoon the dhow turns back toward Fumba and you transfer up to the north of the island. Dinner and your overnight are again at Kendwa Rocks Hotel.

After breakfast you set out to look for dolphins. The pods that live off the island tend to feed and rest in the same waters, so a small boat takes you out to where they are most often seen. Nothing on the ocean is guaranteed, but the odds are good in calm morning conditions, and when the dolphins are relaxed they will swim alongside the boat for a while.

You carry snorkel gear, so when the boat finds a good spot you can slip into the water over the reef. The same waters hold plenty of reef fish and coral, so even a quiet dolphin day still gives you a solid morning of snorkeling. The crew know the currents and pick sheltered spots to get in and out safely.

Back on shore the rest of the day is open. You can rest, swim off the beach or do nothing at all. This is a good afternoon to slow down before the safari leg begins. Dinner is served at the hotel and you spend the night at Kendwa Rocks Hotel.

Today has no fixed plan. After days of moving around, this one is set aside for the beach at Kendwa. The sand here is soft and pale and the water stays swimmable through the tide, so you can be in and out of the sea all day without waiting on the clock.

Spend the morning as you like. Some people swim and read under a palm, others book a massage, take a kayak out or sign up for a diving trip on the reef. The beach bars serve cold drinks and fresh juice, and the whole stretch runs at an easy pace. If you want to be active, the water sports crews on the sand can set you up.

Late in the day the sun sets straight out to sea from this side of the island, which is worth timing a drink for. This is your last full day on the coast, so enjoy the quiet before the early starts of the safari. Dinner and your overnight are at Kendwa Rocks Hotel.

After an early breakfast you transfer to Zanzibar Airport for your flight across to the mainland and the northern safari circuit. The hop over the coast and inland takes a couple of hours in total once you clear the airport, and it saves a very long drive. Your safari guide meets you on the ground with the safari vehicle already loaded for the days ahead.

From the airstrip you head straight into Lake Manyara National Park for your first game drive. Manyara is a narrow park pinned between the Rift Valley wall and the soda lake, and it packs a lot into a small area. It is known for lions that rest up in the branches of acacia trees, an odd habit you do not see in most parks, and for the big flocks of flamingos that turn the shallows pink when the water is right.

You should also see elephants moving through the woodland, hippos, giraffes, baboons and plenty of birds. In the late afternoon you leave the park and climb up to Karatu. Dinner and your overnight are at Karatu Tented Lodge.

After breakfast you head out on a guided walking safari, one of the walking safaris that let you cover ground on foot with an armed ranger leading the way. Walking changes the whole feel of the bush. You notice the small things a vehicle rolls past, tracks in the dust, birdsong, dung and chewed branches, and the ranger reads them for you as you go. It is slow, quiet and close to the ground.

Later you drive to the village of Mto wa Mbu, which sits at the foot of the Rift wall and is one of the more mixed corners of Tanzania, with many different groups farming the same fertile land. Here you swap the vehicle for a bicycle and pedal a gentle loop through the banana and rice plots, past irrigation channels, a local market and family compounds, with a guide to explain what grows where and how people live.

It is an easy, flat ride and a good change of pace from game drives. In the afternoon you head back up. Dinner and your overnight are at Karatu Tented Lodge.

Today is the crater, and it is worth the early start. After a good breakfast you drive up to the rim of Ngorongoro, an old volcano that collapsed in on itself to leave a bowl about six hundred meters deep with unbroken walls all the way around. From the top you look down onto the flat floor before the vehicle drops in on a steep track.

The floor holds a dense spread of animals in a small space, which is what makes the crater special. Zebra and buffalo graze the open grass, elephants with heavy tusks move through the swamp edges, and lions rest in the open where they are easy to see. This is one of the best places in the country to look for black rhino, the hardest of the Big Five to find. Along the shore of the soda lake, flamingos gather in a pink band.

You spend the day on the floor with a picnic lunch before climbing back out in the afternoon. From here you carry on toward the Ndutu plains. Dinner and your overnight are at Tanzania Bush Camp in Ndutu.

An early start gets you out for a walking safari in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, on foot with a ranger while the air is still cool. This is open country and the walk is about the wider scene as much as the animals, the grass, the light and the sense of space, with plains game grazing at a distance and the ranger pointing out tracks and plants along the way.

Later you switch to the vehicle for game drives across the Ndutu area, which straddles the line between the conservation area and the southern Serengeti. Ndutu comes into its own in the calving season, when the great herds gather on these short grass plains to drop their young. In those weeks the plains fill with wildebeest and zebra, and the predators that follow them, lion, cheetah and hyena, are never far behind.

Even outside calving season the open country here is good for cats and fast for spotting. You cover ground slowly, stopping for whatever turns up. Dinner and your overnight are back at Tanzania Bush Camp in Ndutu.

After breakfast you head into the Serengeti for a full day of game viewing in the most famous park in Tanzania. The name means endless plains in the Maasai language, and once you are out on them you understand why, the grass runs flat to the horizon in every direction, broken only by the odd rock outcrop and a lone flat topped tree.

This open country is built for big cats and big herds. You look for lions lying up on the rocks, cheetahs sitting high on a termite mound to scan the plain, and leopards draped in the trees along the river lines. Between the predators you find giraffes, gazelles, buffalo, hyenas and, depending on the season, the tail of the migration moving through. You break for a picnic lunch out in the bush.

You keep exploring through the afternoon as the light softens and the animals grow active again. As the day ends you head to camp. Dinner and your overnight are at Osinon Camps and Lodges.

Your last morning is a quiet one. You have breakfast at the lodge and then set out on the drive back toward Arusha, the safari town that serves as the hub for the northern circuit. Depending on flight times you may fit in a few sightings on the way out of the park before the country turns to farmland and villages.

Arusha sits at the base of Mount Meru, and from here you connect to your onward plans, whether that is an international flight out of Kilimanjaro, a few extra nights in town or a further trip. Your guide sees you to the drop off and helps with the handover. This is where the twelve day safari and beach trip comes to a close.

You will leave with the coast and the plains both behind you, a wide sweep of one country in under two weeks. Breakfast is your final meal on the trip before departure.