Tanzania Safari Camps

Serengeti National Park

The 14,763 square kilometers of the Serengeti are probably most famous for being the southern end of the Great Migration. Every year over 1.5 million animals, mostly wildebeest but also zebra and Thompson's gazelle, follow their instincts and move through the western corridor on their 1,000 kilometer journey to the fresh grazing in the Masai Mara. Predators pick off the weak, the laggardly and the young, and crocodiles feast as the vast herd crosses the rivers but they continue their trek. This is one of the earth's great sights, but by no means all the Serengeti has to offer. The vast, flat central plains, made fertile by the ashes of the ancient volcanoes of the Ngorongoro highlands, are places of huge skies, wild flowers, majestic termite mounds and rock formations called kopjes which make great vantage points for predators. The lions are abundant, the leopards plentiful and black rhino and cheetah both breed here. There are more than 500 species of bird and, interestingly, 100 sub-species of dung beetle – a sign of a varied animal population!

Ngorongoro Crater

In the Great Rift Valley lies the Ngorongoro Crater, one of the wonders of the natural world. It is an extinct volcano which collapsed around 25 million years ago forming a vast bowl where the largest permanent concentration of African game has found refuge. The caldera has sides roughly 1,950 feet high and a flat centre with a diameter of about ten miles. The views from the top of the crater wall are absolutely breathtaking. The crater walls are forested and your drive will take you down into this primeval paradise of woodland, lake, river, swamp and plain that shelters around 40,000 animals. Large grazing animals such as wildebeest, buffalo, gazelle and zebra depend on the open grasslands in the crater. They attract the predators, the black-maned lion, the leopard and the hyena. Elephants feed on the giant sedges and hippo wallow in the pools. The fever tree forests shelter monkeys, bushbuck and waterbuck and the few remaining black rhino. Wildly beautiful, it’s not surprising that Ngorongoro Crater has been called a Garden of Eden.

Manyara National Park

Manyara National Park lies between the towering wall of the Great Rift Valley and Lake Manyara. The waters of the lake with its swampy fringes, the ground water forest, the woodland and the scrub combine to provide habitat for a high density of wildlife. Waterfalls tumble from the terracotta cliffs, streams babble and the lions here climb trees to catch the breezes! In the south of Manyara, near the Endabash River, you will find "Maji Moto", literally "hot water". These hot springs bubble up to the surface heated by geothermal activity. This is also the park to visit for tree climbing lions or if you love elephants – a positive plethora of pachyderms are found here. Zebra and buffalo graze, monkeys chatter in the forested glades while warthog root underneath and the lake itself hosts hippo, clouds of flamingo at certain times of year, pelican, cormorant, duck, storks and ibis. The birdlife is wonderful; around four hundred species inhabit the park.

Tarangire National Park

The 2,600 square kilometer Tarangire National Park is a small but wonderfully compact experience of Tanzania’s wildlife. On the east bank of Lake Manyara the Tarangire River crosses the Tarangire National Park from north to south. In the dry season between June and October the wildlife knows that here there is always water and, in consequence, large numbers of animals including elephant, wildebeest, gazelle, buffalo, eland, zebra and oryx gather at the shrinking pools and drying river bed. Tarangire also has swampy areas that are green all the year round. This is probably the park for birding – the bird population, centered on the swamps, has 550 bird species, the most breeding species in one habitat anywhere in the world. In the drier areas you find Kori bustards, the heaviest flying bird, and the ground hornbills that bluster like turkeys. Tarangire's pythons climb trees, as do its lions and leopards, lounging in the branches where the fruit of the sausage tree disguises the twitch of a tail!