3 Days Tanzania Safari, Tarangire, Ngorongoro Crater & Lake Manyara

After breakfast your guide collects you from your accommodation in Moshi and points the vehicle toward Tarangire National Park to start the safari. The drive takes you out of the highlands and down toward the drier country of the Rift Valley floor, arriving at the park in good time to begin.

Tarangire was set aside as a national park from former hunting grounds, and it covers a spread of land roughly the size of Luxembourg. It is best known for its elephants, which gather here in large numbers during the dry season, and for the great baobab trees that stand scattered across the northeast and give the park its unmistakable look. Lion, leopard and cheetah all range across this country too, though the cats always take patience and a little luck. Along the seasonal Tarangire River you can watch herds come down to drink, and the birdlife through the woodland is excellent.

After a long, easy afternoon of game viewing you settle in for dinner and overnight at a campsite inside the park.

You take an early breakfast and set off for the Ngorongoro Crater, passing through the busy little town of Mto wa Mbu with views of Lake Manyara opening up along the way. The road then climbs the steep slopes of the East African Rift Valley wall, gaining height until you reach the cool, green highlands of Ngorongoro, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Dropping some six hundred metres to the crater floor, you come into an enclosed world thick with animals. The crater supports somewhere between fifteen and twenty five thousand large animals, among them buffalo, wildebeest, zebra and gazelle, and that abundance of prey supports plenty of predators. With well over a hundred lions living inside the walls, and elephant, buffalo, rhino and leopard all present, this is one of the few places where seeing the full Big Five in a single day is a real possibility, though nothing on safari is ever promised.

Dinner and the night are at Simba Camp, perched on the crater rim with long views over the caldera below.

After breakfast you leave the highlands and drive down to Lake Manyara National Park, built around a large, shallow soda lake that draws huge numbers of birds. Flamingos gather here in pink drifts along the shore, and keen birders can pick out well over four hundred species in the park, including cormorant, stork and pelican.

Manyara is also known for its tree climbing lions, most often seen draped in the branches out in the central open areas, and your game drive gives you the chance to look for them among the acacias. Along the way you can expect elephant, giraffe, buffalo, hippo and zebra, with troops of baboon in the forest near the entrance. The park's small size means the different habitats come quickly one after another, so the morning stays full and varied.

In the late afternoon you begin the drive back to Moshi, arriving with a good sense of what northern Tanzania has to offer. Breakfast and lunch are provided on this final day.