East Africa Safari – Kenya & Tanzania

Upon arrival at Kilimanjaro International airport, you shall be met by our representative and be transferred to the hotel. Nestled at the foot of Mount Meru, Arusha is a bustling, attractive city and the starting point for our safari. As today is arrival day, there are no planned activities.

Overnight: Arusha Mountain Village Lodge

Meals: Dinner

After an early breakfast, we travel to Lake Manyara National Park for our first game drive. Stretching for 50km along the base of the rusty-gold 600-metre high Rift Valley escarpment, Lake Manyara is a scenic gem, with a setting extolled by Ernest Hemingway as “the loveliest I had seen in Africa”. It offers a compact game-viewing circuit which offers a virtual microcosm of the Tanzanian safari experience.After lunch, proceed to Gibb’s Farm which was one of the first guesthouses in northern Tanzania and began as a coffee farm in the late 1920’s. Before dinner we sit around the bonfire that helps to keep elephants away from the farm, and share some of the interesting local tales.

Overnight: Gibb’s Farm (subject to change)

Meals: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

After breakfast, learn about the coffee roasting process and wander around the farm’s beautiful seven acres of garden, where all the produce served on the farm is grown.

We bid farewell to our wonderful hosts at Gibb’s Farm and continue to Ngorongoro Crater, an extinct volcano that collapsed in on itself around 25 million years ago thus forming a vast bowl where the largest permanent concentration of African game is on display. This afternoon we visit a Maasai Boma (homestead) to experience first-hand the way of life of the nomadic people, still clinging to their traditional way of life.

Overnight: Ngorongoro Serena Lodge

Meals: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

The views from the top of the crater wall are absolutely breathtaking as we descend in our four wheel drive vehicles into this primeval paradise of woodland, lake, river, swamp and plain that shelters around 20,000 animals. Many of these are the large grazing animals such as wildebeest, buffalo, gazelle, and zebra who depend on the open grasslands in the crater. These attract the attendant predators, the black-maned lion, the leopard, and hyena. The elephant found within the caldera tend to be the lone males who have left the herds in the forested crater rim. When the water stocks are low elsewhere, animals within this micro-world turn to the swamps for fresh water and food. We search the crater for lions, elephants, zebra, hippo, buffalos, and rhino to name a few.

Our lunch today will be picnic-style lunch on the crater floor. After an exciting day of safari, you will return to the lodge.

Overnight: Ngorongoro Serena Lodge

Meals: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

After breakfast we head along the Great Rift Valley to Olduvai Gorge “the Cradle of Mankind” and site of one of the most important and controversial Palaeolithic finds in recent history. Visiting the information centre, we enjoy a lecture about the Leakeys and their incredible finds such as the remains of early hominids “Nutcracker Man” and “Toolmaking Man”.

From Olduvai Gorge we continue to the Serengeti where we’ll have lunch at our lodge. The Serengeti Serena Lodge is ideally located for safari game drives as well as optional activities such as balloon safaris, guided walks etc.

This afternoon you will have your first game drive in the Serengeti, Tanzania’s most famous park which covers 14,763 sq km of endlessly rolling savannah plains, rivers, swamps, and volcanic massifs. Tens of thousands of hoofed animals roam in a constant and unrelenting search for the fresh grasslands upon which their survival depends.

Overnight: Serengeti Serena Lodge

Meals: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

The name comes from the Maasai word “siringet” meaning ‘endless plain’. Due to this diverse ecosystem it is undoubtedly one of the world’s last great wildlife refuges. The Serengeti is home to over 2 million wildebeest, half a million Thomson’s gazelle, and a quarter of a million zebra, giraffe, eland, topi, impala and other antelope. The predators are also well represented by lion, leopard, cheetah and hyena. In total, there are nearly 35 species of savannah animals and almost 500 species of birds including lilac-breasted rollers, barbets, and ring-necked doves living in this animal kingdom.

Today we have both morning and afternoon game-drives in the park. Breakfast, lunch and dinner are served at the lodge, where guided nature walks can also be taken (extra cost).

Overnight: Serengeti Serena Lodge

Meals: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

This morning we depart with picnic lunches, and exit Serengeti from the Western side, close to Lake Victoria. This is where we bid farewell to our Tanzania guides and cross the border into Kenya at Isabenia and proceed to Maasai Mara. We enjoy a game-drive en route to our luxury tented camp, Ashnil Mara, located close to the Mara River. There’ll be time to take a refreshing dip in the pool before proceeding for dinner.

Overnight: Ashnil Mara Tented Camp

Meals: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

Offering an abundance of herbivores, the Maasai Mara makes the ideal hunting ground for Kenya’s famous ‘big cats’ and hosts her largest population of lions. It also offers the best chance of spotting a leopard in the wild as well as other predators such as cheetah and spotted hyena.

Historically teaming with wildlife, the Mara is famous for the large herds of elephant and buffalo that meander its plains; also for the fat pods of hippo that wallow in its mud-brown rivers. Other stars of the reserve include the distinctive Maasai giraffe, plum-coloured topi, Coke’s hartebeest, Grant’s and Thomson’s gazelle, zebra, impala, Kirk’s dik-dik, bushbuck, waterbuck, and red duiker. The Maasai Mara also boasts plentiful Nile crocodile, monitor lizard, baboon, vervet monkeys, blue and red-tailed monkeys, nocturnal bush babies, and tree hyrax plus a plethora of resident and migratory birds.

With a full day to enjoy all that the Mara has to offer, we will have a morning game drive and, in the afternoon, a chance to sample nature and some of the wildlife on foot. With a guide and in the company of an armed ranger, we walk along the edge of the park identifying birds, animals and plants along the way.

Overnight: Ashnil Mara Tented Camp

Meals: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

Today we have the opportunity to further explore the Mara with game drives in the reserve in both the morning and afternoon.

Overnight: Ashnil Mara Tented Camp

Meals: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

After an early breakfast, we drive northbound to the Mbweha Camp located in Soysambu Conservancy and near Lake Nakuru National Park.

This afternoon we have a game drive in Soysambu Conservancy, a non-profit organisation that endeavours to preserve Africa’s unique Great Rift Valley ecosystem. Home to an astounding variety of flora and fauna, including Colobus Monkey and the semi-endangered Rothschild Giraffe, Lake Elmenteita’s islands are the only breeding ground of the Great White Pelican in East Africa. Both Lesser and Greater Flamingo also frequent the lake. More than 450 species of birdlife and 15 000 wildlife were recently counted on the Soysambu census.

Overnight: Mbweha Luxury Tented Camp

Meals: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

After an early breakfast, we head to Lake Nakuru National Park for a game drive. The most famous of the Great Rift Valley lakes, Lake Nakuru is renowned for its magnificent birdlife, especially the flamingos which seasonally flock there to be deemed ‘the greatest bird spectacle on earth’. Its alkaline waters, the pink-frosted shores and sky-mirrored waters of Lake Nakuru yield some of the most evocatively beautiful photo-images in Africa. This 188 square kilometre park is a paradise for those who are particularly interested in ornithology and also offers the opportunity of seeing both white and black rhino, the rare Rothchild’s giraffe, large herds of cape buffalo, and an abundance of various plains game. Sightings of leopard resting in the branches of acacia trees are very common.

We return to our camp for lunch with an afternoon at leisure. We’ll dine early so that we can participate in a night game drive in Soysambu Conservancy – a chance to see some of those very elusive, nocturnal species.

Overnight: Mbweha Luxury Tented Camp

Meals: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

This morning we proceed to Lake Naivasha, a freshwater lake and the highest of the string of lakes that glitter down the vast trench of the Great Rift Valley. Towered over by the brooding bulk of Mount Longonot (2 776 m), and featuring a submerged volcanic island known as Crescent Island, this beautiful lake is best known for its high numbers of water birds. We will take a boat trip to Crescent Island, now preserved as wildlife sanctuary, where we’ll walk among giraffe, wildebeests, zebra, and impala.

After standing in the shadows of giants, we take the boat back to the lake shore for lunch in one of the nearby lodges before continuing to Nairobi. Both the capital and the largest city in Kenya, Nairobi is the most important centre in East Africa.

Overnight: Nairobi Panafric Hotel

Meals: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

After enjoying breakfast, we drive to David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, at the edge of Nairobi National Park. The Wildlife Trust takes care of orphaned baby elephants and rhinos which we’ll have the opportunity to observe at feeding time. Continuing on from our ‘cute overdose’, we visit the Giraffe Centre, where you can feed these gentle giants. We end our tour with a visit to the charming farmhouse of the author of Out of Africa, Karen Blixen who lived there from 1914 to 1931.

We transfer this evening to Jomo Kenyatta International airport for our international flights.

Thanks for travelling with Finisterra!