Northern Tanzania Safari on a Camping Budget, 5 Days

Our driver will meet you at the reception of your hotel in Arusha and take you to Lake Manyara National Park. The park is a paradise for bird lovers, with over 400 bird species, and it is also home to primates like baboons and blue monkeys and to many herbivores, including elephants, hippos, wildebeests, impalas, and giraffes. With luck you may also glimpse carnivores such as leopards and lions. . Once game viewing is finished, you leave the park for dinner and the night at Kizumba Camp Site . The camp sits at the top of the East African Rift Valley.

Once breakfast is finished, you drive on through fertile highlands where the Iraqw people grow wheat, coffee and corn. You pass through the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, where you can take in the breathtaking Ngorongoro Crater viewpoint, and then continue to Serengeti National Park, arriving by midday. An evening game drive in the park is possible. You spend the night in the Seronera Nyani Campsite area in central Serengeti.

You spend today exploring Serengeti National Park on a full-day game drive. Your guide takes you closer to wherever the migrating wildebeest herds are found. In the short rains of November and December the herds move from the hills in the north down to the southern plains, then head back north during the longer rains from April to June. Leopards, cheetahs and lions may be lurking nearby, and you could spot some. After a busy day you go back to your campsite for dinner and the night.

Early in the morning you head out on one more game drive in the Serengeti, then continue toward the Ngorongoro Crater. Before long the unbroken caldera, 600 meters deep, opens out in front of you, and you can pause to take in the awe-inspiring views of the collapsed volcano. Your campsite sits right on the crater’s edge, so you get a once-in-a-lifetime view while the sun slowly sets over the crater. Dinner and the night are at Simba- A campsite.

Early in the morning, you go down the forested slopes into the crater along a steep, narrow path. The crater floor is open grassland with an occasional acacia tree and two small wooded areas. Many animals can be seen in a short time, and you might even complete the “Big Five” – lion, elephant, buffalo, rhino and leopard. The whole morning is spent exploring, and after a picnic lunch in the crater, you drive back to Arusha, arriving in the early evening. END OF THE TOUR.