Most lodges include DBB, and selected activities. The prices that we have included are based on the range from low season to peak/high season, and are on a per person per night sharing basis.
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Please note - we consider every enquiry seriously and as a potential booking. We have some schedule safari trips to offer, but we find the majority of our clients prefer an itinerary customised to their dates and budget. Such trips take longer to plan and quote and so we generally will exchange a number of emails with you, before we can quote anything. We are a small company offering a personal service, with the 'wheels operation' based in Arusha, Tanzania.
Dar Es Salaam
To most travellers Dar es Salaam is just a convenient port of call on the way to more exotic destinations. Dar is the real capital, a hustling, bustling seaport that straddles some of the most important sea routes on earth.
Life in Dar es Salaam revolves around the huge harbour, with the business district fanning out from here in a series of fascinating side and main streets. The city itself is an eclectic mix of Swahili, German, Asian and British architecture, reflecting its colonial past and more recent history. In fact it’s a relatively new city.
Wandering the streets of Dar is nowhere more rewarding than in the Asian business district, along India Street. Here flavours and smells are of a little Bombay, and if there’s anything you need to buy for your holiday, this is the place to find it. In this concentrated section of the city, you’ll also find some of the best restaurants in East Africa.
We offer a carefully selected variety of hotels to suit tourists and the business travellers.
Mount Kilimanjaro
Mount Kilimanjaro is the tallest freestanding mountain in the world, so it can truly be regarded as the roof of Africa. “ As wide as all the world, great, high and unbelievably white,” was Ernest Hemingway’s description in his book, “The Snows of Kilimanjaro.”
The highest peak and most famous mountain in Africa, scaling the peak of Mount Kilimanjaro is a heavy challenge, more from the rigours of altitude than the actual difficulty of the hike itself. The climb, which takes on average five days, takes hikers through thick forests, desolate rockface, alpine grasslands and brilliant white glaciers.
Climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro is the highlight of most visitors’ experiences in Tanzania. Few mountains can claim the grandeur, the breathtaking views of Amboseli National Park in Kenya, the Rift Valley and the Maasai Steppe, that belongs to Kilimanjaro. Hiking on the “rooftop of Africa”. This is an adventure of a lifetime, especially because, if paced well, everyone from seasoned trekkers to first- time enthusiasts can scale the snowy peak.
Ngorongoro Crater
Geologically, Ngorongoro is the remnant of a volcano that blew apart, leaving a flat plain area ringed with steep walls. The Ngorongoro volcano, before it exploded and collapsed 2 millions years ago, was one of the world’s tallest mountains. The Ngorongoro crater is also known to be about 2,286 m above sea level and is the largest unbroken caldera in the world. The crater has been declared a World Heritage Site.
The Ngorongoro crater is the most famous of all Africa’s conservation areas, and is worth visiting at least once in your lifetime. It is the largest intact volcanic caldera in the world, and some scientists maintain that before it erupted, it stood higher than Mount Kilimanjaro, which is now the highest point in Africa.
The crater is special because it’s a haven for big East African wild animals in north central Tanzania. The crater is home to a permanent population of more than 30 000 animals, and is one of the only places in Africa where you stand a chance of seeing the “Big Five” in the course of a morning and evening game drive. Nights on the crater rim where you find the lodges tend to be icy cold, and it is one of life’s great pleasures to sit around a roaring fire, drink in hand, re-living the day’s game viewing.
Unique to the crater is that the local Maasai, who graze their cattle on the floor, and it is not unusual to see Maasai cattle and buffalo grazing together. While game viewing is excellent year around, large parts of the crater floor become impassable after heavy rains, although this can add to the attraction, as there are fewer tourists, the light is better for photography, and the game gets concentrated on the higher ground.
Serengeti Plains
Serengeti National Park is undoubtedly the best-known wildlife sanctuary in the world, unequalled for its natural beauty and scientific value. The name Serengeti comes from the Maasai language and appropriately means an extended place. It lies between the shores of Lake Victoria in the west, Lake Eyasi in the south, and the Great Rift Valley to the east. As such, it offers the most complex and least disturbed ecosystem on earth. Travellers are not the only ones who now flock to see the animals and birds of the Serengeti. It has become an important centre of scientific research.
Small rivers, lakes and swamps are scattered throughout. In the southeast rise the great volcanic massifs and craters of the Ngorongoro Highlands. Each area has its own particular atmosphere and wildlife.
All is lush and green after the rains, but gradual drying up follows which restricts plant growth and encourages the animals to migrate in search of permanent waters. For centuries, the vast wilderness of the Serengeti Plains remained virtually unhabitated but about hundred years ago the nomadic Maasai came down from the north with their cattle.
The variety of accommodation include luxury tented lodges, brick and thatch chalets, double story luxury hotels and budget hotels, each located in carefully selected areas of the Serengeti.
Lake Manyara
Tucked below the majesty of the Rift Valley wall, Lake Manyara National Park is a thin green band of forest, flanked on one side by the sheer high red and brown cliffs of the escarpment and on the other by the white-hot shores of an ancient soda lake. Lake Manyara is spectacular, regardless of direction. The Park derives its name from the Maasai, which simply means Euphorbia tirucalli. The Maasai use this plant to grow livestock stockades. Eventually Manyara will produce a stockproof hedge, which is more durable than any made of cut thorn branches.
This wedge of surprisingly varied vegetation supports a wealth of wildlife, nourished by the streams flowing and spilling over the cliffs. Acacia woodland shelters the parks famous tree-climbing lions, lying languidly among the branches in the heat of the day. Feeding in the undergrowth or dozing in the dry riverbeds is the country’s densest populations of buffalo and elephant.
Deep in the south of the park, hot springs bubble to the surface as hippos wallow near the lake’s edge lined borders. The park’s dazzling variety of birds includes thousands of red-billed quelea flitting over the water, pelicans, cormorants and the pink streaks of thousands of flamingo. Manyara is the perfect location for an active safari – canoeing on the lake or mountain biking and abseiling outside the park’s borders. In order to get the most of your visit to Manyara, drive slowly, take some of the loop roads and spend time looking at the different types of trees and watching animals. You guide will best assist you when driving through Lake Manyara, as they know the roads well and where the wildlife is at any particular time.
Our selected accommodation includes exclusive lodges, in the park or perimeter to these lodges and hotels on the escarpment of the Great Rift Valley, overlooking the lake.
Tarangire Park
Tarangire has a wild beauty, similar to the parks in Southern Tanzania. There are spectacular baobab trees, abundant elephant and wildlife and even an occasional palm tree. Tarangire Park is located about 120 km from Arusha, south east of Manyara. The Tarangire River lures animals to it’s banks during the dry season, making it one of the best places to visit during the dry months of June and through November. The best time to visit the park for wildlife viewing or walking is the dry season, June or October.
The dry season enjoys the greatest concentration of wildlife outside the Serengeti ecosystem. When the rains come in late October, the animals migrate out of the park North to the Serengeti, leaving the resident waterbuck, warthog, impala, rhino and giraffe behind. As the water increases, so does the tsetse fly population. A blessing in disguise, this small fly is kept the Maasai and their cattle out of the area, leaving the land and the wildlife undistributed for many years.
All recommended accommodation is inside the park or perimeter.
Zanzibar
The spice island of Zanzibar lies off the coast of Tanzania in the Indian Ocean. It is famous for once being the commercial centre of East Africa. And the last place to abolish to slave trade.
Zanzibar’s lasting mystique has attracted travellers from around the world for centuries. It’s history stretches far back to when the first dhows from Arabia and India discovered its natural harbour. Using the island as a stopover point for caravans that journeyed deep into the interior, permanent settlement soon created the beginnings of what became Stone Town. Which is also known as Zanzibar’s old quarter, this is a fascinating maze of narrow streets and alleyways which lead past
numerous old houses and buildings in the Stone Town date from 19th century slave boom. Highlights include the magnificent House of Wonders, the Palace Museum and the seafront fish market.
For cultural connoisseurs, its best to time a visit around on of Zanzibar’s many festivals. Vibrant occasions occur throughout the year, days of celebration when the island and its people truly come alive.
Yet there’s more to Zanzibar than the main island. To the north, Pemba Island offers world-class diving in pristine surroundings. Accommodation ranges from the most basic to the utmost in barefoot luxury and visitors agree that a visit to Pemba is well worth the effort.
Selous & Mikumi Parks
Selous is the second biggest conservation area in Africa, and the largest game reserve on the continent, and a proclaimed world heritage site. To add size to this game reserve, it covers an area more than twice that of Denmark and Switzerland and is nearly four times the size of the Serengeti. The defining feature of the Selous is the great Rufiji River, which naturally splits the ecosystem into two distinct parts. Adding to the air of wild remoteness is that there only a few lodges in the reserve. While bulk of the reserve is miombo woodland, there are sections of magnificent grass plains, wetlands and swamps and areas of dense canopy forest. One of the most sublime ways to explore the Selous Game Reserve is by boat, meandering through channels and swamps, exploring hidden lagoons where elephant often come to bathe.
During the dry season between June and October the riverbanks explode in a spectacular flood of plains animals quenching their thirst all under the opportunistic eye of crocodile. The reserve is home to over 350 species of birdlife.
MIKUMI PARKS
Mikumi National Park abuts the northern border of Africa’s biggest game reserve – the Selous and is transacted by the surfaced road between Dar es Salaam and Iringa. The open horizons and abundant wildlife of the Mkata Floodplain, the popular centrepiece of the Mikumi, draw frequent comparisons to the more famous Serengeti Plains. Criss-crossed by a good circuit of game viewing roads, the Mkata Floodplain is perhaps the most reliable place in Tanzania for sightings of the powerful eland, the world’s largest antelope. The most equally impressive greater Kudu and sable antelope haunt the miombo-covered foothills of the mountains that rise from the parks borders.
Lions survey their grassy kingdom – and the zebra, wildebeest, impala and buffalo herds that migrate across it – from the flattened tops of termite mounds, or sometimes, during the rains, from perches high in the trees. Giraffe’s forage in the isolated acacia stands that fringe the Mkata River, islets of shade favoured also by Mikumi’s elephants.
It is here where you will find the African wild dog, a predator rarely seen anywhere else in Africa. In the Southern region of the park, the miombo woodland is full of hot springs and populated by crocodiles.
Mikumi National Park’s unique combination of flora and fauna is partly a consequence of its location at the intersection of four major vegetation zones making it an ecotonal area. Miombo woodland extending from Southern Africa meets more arid bushland coming down from the North. The coastal zone to the east and to the mountains to the east and west also influence Mikumi.
