Tarangire, Ngorongoro & Manyara

We leave your hotel in Arusha at 8:30am for the roughly two-hour drive to Tarangire National Park, then spend the full day on game drives inside the park. Tarangire is famous for its large elephant population, and you'll likely also see zebra, wildebeest, giraffe, waterbuck, baboons, dwarf mongoose, impala, buffalo, antelope and fringe-eared oryx, with lion, cheetah and leopard among the predators.

The swamps here draw flocks of birds: green wood hoopoes, lovebirds, herons, white-bellied go-away birds and giant kingfishers, while drier ground is home to the kori bustard and the ostrich, the heaviest of the flying birds. After the day's game drive it's about a 45-minute drive to your accommodation for dinner and an overnight stay at Farm of Dreams Lodge.

Today is a full day inside the Ngorongoro Crater, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1979. On the way we can stop at a Maasai village in the Ngorongoro Highlands (optional, at extra cost), where you'll meet elders, warriors, women and children and learn about the culture, beliefs and traditions of Tanzania's last nomadic tribe.

The crater is known for some of Africa's best game viewing, thanks to a permanent water supply on the crater floor that keeps wildlife present year-round. We descend around 610 metres into the crater, where the safari truly begins: the endangered black rhino, wildebeest, buffalo, zebra, eland, Grant's and Thomson's gazelle, and giant-tusked elephants share the floor with lions, leopards, cheetahs and scavengers like spotted hyenas, jackals and wild dogs. Over 500 bird species have been recorded within the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. In the evening we head back to the lodge for dinner and a second night at Farm of Dreams Lodge.

The final day is a full game drive in Lake Manyara National Park. Stretched along the base of the Rift Valley escarpment, it's home to giant fig trees, acacia woodland, mahogany trees and grassy floodplains, a landscape Ernest Hemingway once described as the loveliest he'd seen in Africa, with its open plains, huge escarpment, soda lake and distant volcanic peaks.

Buffalo, wildebeest, giraffe, mongoose, dik-dik and zebra gather on the grassy plains, while the acacia woodland is home to Manyara's legendary tree-climbing lions and its elephants. More than 400 bird species have been recorded here, including thousands of flamingos on their ongoing migration, alongside pelicans and storks. In the late afternoon we return to Arusha for your final evening, or transfer you to the airport for your next destination.