Depart on an overnight flight to Amsterdam. On day 2 fly nonstop to Arusha, arriving late in the evening Meals: Breakfast, dinner Lodging: Ngurdoto Lodge, Kilimanjaro Tanzania. .

After breakfast and a briefing, we board our specially outfitted Land Cruisers for a short drive to Arusha National Park. Here you will enjoy a 11/2 hour guided walk through a flat, acacia dotted plain to a secluded waterfall, perhaps seeing buffalo, antelope and other animals along the way before feasting on a picnic lunch. This is northern Tazania’s best place for spotting colobus monkeys and bushbuck, perhaps right from the lodge! If it’s clear, we’ll have views of Mount Kilimanjaro and Mount Meru. Meals: Breakfast, dinner Lodging: Ngurdoto Lodge, Kilimanjaro Tanzania. .

Drive south through open grasslands to Tarangire National Park, arriving late in the morning. En route, we’ll enjoy a game drive. After lunch, another game drive awits. We stay at Tarangire Tented Lodge, set on a bluff overlooking the Tarangire River valley. Meals: Breakfast, Lunch, dinner Lodging: Tarangire Tented Safari Lodge, Tanzania.   .

Wild Tarangire encompasses nine distinct vegetation zones, ranging from grassland to woodland and from deep gully vegetation to scattered rocky hilltops. This complex environment supports elephant, lion, leopard and the world’s largest recorded concentration of breeding bird species. Meals: Breakfast, Lunch, dinner Lodging: Tarangire Tented Safari Lodge, Tanzania. .

Perhaps we will meet Maasai tribespeople today, as we drive through the colourful village of Mto-wa-mbu and climb up the western escarpment of the Great Rift Valley. We alsohave time to admire profuse flora and bird life when we stop at Lake Manyara National Park. We arrive at our lodge in time for lunch Meals: Breakfast, Lunch, dinner Lodging: Lake Manyara Serena Lodge, Tanzania. .

An optional early-morning balloon ride offers breathtaking views as the sun illuminates the Serengeti’s 5,700 square miles of plains riverine bush and acacia woodland. The multitude of species in this vast protected area is is unrivaled on the planet, with more than 1.3 million wildbeest, 200,000 zebra, and a quarer of a million Thompson and Grants gazelles. We venture out on two game drives daily, in the early morning and again in the late afternoon. Each day is differerent. Our driver guides are masters at finding elusive speciaes, such as the bat-eared and golden jackal. Meals: Breakfast, Lunch, dinner Lodging: Serengeti Serena Lodge, Tanzania. .

Today we depart for a full-day game drive in the crater. Ngorongoro, the largest unflooded caldera in the world, was formed after the eruption and collapse of a vast, ancient volcano. The crater is some 12 miles in diameter, and its steep walls climb more than 2,000 feet, making this a natural amphitheatre for wildlifrof unrivaled proportions. More than 30,000 animals of every variety live here, and we’re sure to encounter some of them: lions,hippos,wildbeest,zebra,buffalo, cheetah, baboons, hyenas and more, Meals: Breakfast, Lunch, dinner Lodging: Ngorongoro Serena Lodge, Tanzania. .

After breakfast this morning we’ll head to the village of Karatu, where we explore a local market and enjoy a visit to a village school. After lunch back at our lodge, you’ll have the afternoon free to relax, or you may participate in an elective walk. Meals: Breakfast, Lunch, dinner Lodging: Ngorongoro Serena Lodge, Tanzania. .