African Safari: Tanzania

Tanzania: the ultimate safari destination. With some of the world’s most unique ecosystems, Tanzania should be your number one choice for your African safari. On this post, you will find helpful tips and a comprehensive travel plan to experience Tanzania’s most exciting national parks and rich culture.

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Arriving in Tanzania:

Most safari travel companies will fly you into Kilimanjaro International Airport (KIA). Although you can get an entry visa upon arrival ($100), I highly recommend you get your Tanzania visa beforehand. With your visa already approved through the Tanzanian embassy in Washington, D.C., you will beat the flood of tourists and long lines at the airport. After you exit the airport and begin your journey to nearby Arusha, snowcapped Mt. Kilimanjaro can be seen in the distance welcoming you to Tanzania.

Arusha:

Arusha is a 1-hour drive from the airport and the jumping off point for your safari. With plenty of hotels and activities, Arusha will keep you busy before you enter the national parks. Visit a local market to see colorful home-made fabrics, smell the fresh produce, and hear locals speaking Swahili. Afterwards, visit the Cultural Heritage Centre to see an extensive collection of East African art. Inspired by the surrounding wildlife, local artists have created beautifully crafted wooden sculptures and oil paintings. Stroll through the multilevel gallery before walking the nearby sculpture garden.

 

Arriving at Tarangire National Park:

Tarangire National Park is a 2-hour and 45-minute drive from Arusha through rolling grasslands. As you drive, you will see farmers working the land and small villages buzzing with activity. If you depart Arusha in the morning, you will have enough time to check into your Tarangire safari lodge before venturing into the national park for an afternoon game drive. In Tanzania, national parks have a range of lodging options and one of the best ways to enjoy the wildlife is to stay at tented camp lodges. At Tarangire, we stayed at the Maramboi Tented Camp. This beautiful camp has 40 elevated tents with private bathrooms. Sitting on your wooden porch, or swimming at the pool after an exciting game drive, you will see antelopes, zebras, and wildebeests grazing in the distance.

What to Wear:

Before you go on your first game drive, you want to dress correctly to get the most out of your adventure. Most safari companies will take visitors out on early morning and afternoon game drives. Check the weather forecast before each game drive to prepare if extra layers are needed. Wearing neutral colors and long-sleeve breathable shirts will keep the pestering tsetse flies away and help you stay cool. The colors alone will not keep the flies away, so make sure you pack enough bug spray for your entire trip.

Most travelers will wear khaki pants to protect against bugs and the sun; however, I wore khaki shorts and did not experience any problems. If you are visiting during the hot season, wearing shorts is acceptable as long as you apply liberal amounts of sunscreen and bug spray.

A wide brim hat helps keep you cool and away from direct sunlight on your drives. Also, bring two pairs of sunglasses in case you lose one, as sunglasses protect your eyes from the sun and dust. One item that is very useful is a neck scarf or bandana that you can tie around your neck. Roads are very dusty in Tanzania; wearing a breathable mask as you enter dust clouds is extremely helpful in keeping dirt out of your mouth and nose.

Game Drives at Tarangire:

As Tanzania’s third-largest national park, Tarangire is a great place to start your safari adventure. From grasslands to woodlands, this national park has a range of ecosystems that sustains a diverse wildlife population. Spending two to three days at Tarangire will give you enough time to enjoy all this wonderful national park has to offer. As you enter the park, you will see baboons enjoying the shade around massive baobab trees. With massive trunks, these trees can live up to 6,000 years and are home to many creatures.

One of the best things about going on a safari is the learning opportunity. Travel companies hire the very best safari guides who have incredible knowledge about the wildlife, ecology, and culture of Tanzania. These guides spend years learning how to be expert travel guides at specialized colleges throughout the country. They use their incredible tracking skills to get you up close and personal with the wildlife. At Tarangire, you will find one of the highest concentrations of elephants in Tanzania. If you are visiting in spring (we were there in March), your safari guides will track down herds of elephants with newborn calfs for you to see.

Another amazing experience at Tarangire is the diversity of wildlife. Many times you will be sitting on a hill and will spot five to six different animal species in the same area. Giraffes are one of the more abundant species at Tarangire and you can see them enjoying the trees in the wooden section of the national park.

Maasai People:

When you are planning your safari, make sure to include a visit to a local community to learn more about the Maasai people. As a group of semi-nomadic people in Kenya and Tanzania, the Maasai have a unique way of life that should not be missed. Make sure that your travel company ventures beyond the tourist stops to give you an authentic experience at a remote farming community. At our community visit, we enjoyed a lesson on traditional dancing, roof-repair, and furniture making in the remote bush lands surrounding Tarangire.

Arriving at Ngorongoro Conservation Area:

A 2-hour and 45-minute drive from Tarangire National Park is the world-renowned Ngorongoro Conservation Area. This UNESCO World Heritage Site is one of world’s top ecological wonders. Known as Africa’s Garden of Eden, Ngorongoro Conservation Area sits within a twelve mile-wide caldera with one of the highest wildlife densities in the world. At the rim, you will see an expansive grassland with a meandering river, small lake, and a forested region within the creator’s bowl. You will find giraffes and other grazing animals as you drive down the caldera’s steep walls.

Game Drives at Ngorongoro:

Spending one to two days at the conservation area, you will be exposed to countless animal species interacting with each other in an enclosed, but sustaining ecosystem. Because of its small size, the caldera has a “Jurassic Park-type” feel with so many animals and tourists trying to get the best view. However, this should not deter you from experiencing one of the most amazing ecological communities in the world. It is here where you will find gazelles, zebras, wildebeests, and ostriches living side-by-side with lions and hyenas. How they interact, you will find out.

Ngorongoro is one of the best spots to check off every safari travelers’ “Big 5” list, seeing an elephant, cape buffalo, lion, black rhino, and leopard. At Ngorongoro, you have the best luck to see cape buffalos and black rhinos compared to Tarangire and the Serengeti.

During game drives, you will witness amazing things. Every game drive brings new experiences and that is why people return to Tanzania year after year. We enjoyed a box lunch with hippos on the banks of a small lake. We had lions that came right up to our vehicles. I will never forget these experiences and that is why an African safari is a trip of a lifetime.

School Visit:

When you are staying in the Ngorongoro Highlands, one of the best ways to learn more about the Tanzanian people is to visit a local primary schools. Some travel companies will partner with schools and a portion of your trip’s cost will go toward the school. These school visits are a great opportunity for students to learn about other countries and to practice their English. We went into a 6th-grade English class and helped students with their homework. Many of these students traverse long distances to get to school every day from distant farms. Many of them have not witnessed the wildlife that lies beyond the caldera’s steep walls. As I helped the students with their vocabulary lesson, I pulled out my camera and showed the students the photos I had taken on a game drive the day before. I pointed to each animal in the picture and said its name in English and the kids would laugh and would say the word in Swahili. Being able to connect with the local community in this way was a fun and eye-opening experience that many safari tourists do not get the chance to have. When planning your trip to Tanzania, look at travel companies that will give you time to learn, work, and play with locals.

Oldupai Gorge:

As you drive from the Ngorongoro Conservation Area to Serengeti National Park, take a quick detour to visit Oldupai (Olduvai) Gorge. Take a picnic lunch and enjoy the beautiful scenery where Louis and Mary Leakey discovered fossils of ancient humans. Time permitting, visit the small museum at the rim of the gorge to learn more about archeology and anthropology at this active excavation site.

Arriving at Serengeti National Park:

Nothing can compare to the beauty of Serengeti National Park. Meaning “endless plain” in Maasai, Serengeti is a massive national park that is larger than the state of Connecticut. Even though it is Africa’s most famous national park, we spent days traversing the land and did not come across another tourist group. You can have your own adventure within the national park exploring the wild at its best. It is here that you will find animal migrations on a tremendous scale and the highest concentrations of predators on the planet. As you enter the park, you will arrive at the check-in post, which is a rocky island in a sea of grass. Stretch your legs and climb the rocks to get a 360-degree view of the surrounding area. Afterwards, your safari company will take you to your mobile tented camp. While driving to your camp, you will be immersed into the wild, and elephants and zebras will greet you as you travel deeper into the heart of the national park.

I highly recommend you book your safari with a company that has its own private Serengeti camp. We had 9 tents on the slope of a tiny hill in the middle of the national park and it was phenomenal. Some of the features at our tented camp included: private bathrooms, a camp staff, and communal area with a fire pit and outside covered eating area for our safari group to enjoy. At night, we saw a star-studded sky with the sounds of animals in the distance, memories to last a lifetime! When booking your safari trip, look for travel companies that have mobile tented camps which change locations as the animals migrate across the national park.

Game Drive at Serengeti:

Four days is the perfect amount of time to get the most out of your visit at Serengeti National Park. Your safari guides will take you on early morning and afternoon game drives to see the abundant wildlife. On your game drives, you can never fully expect what you will see. One morning we left camp and five-minutes later we came across a hyena with its breakfast, a zebra, while onlooking vultures waited for the scrapes. These moments are what make safari game drives amazing. We spent 20 minutes watching a zebra corpse turn into a pile of bones. Three days later nothing remind. Another unpredictable moment was when we came across a pair of leopards playing in the grass and trees. As one of the most elusive animals in Africa, the leopards were a major highlight of our trip.

Each day will have new opportunities to see animals in their natural habitat. You will drive through kopjes, rock hills that are home to lion prides just like in the movie The Lion King. You will experience the Great Migration of over 1.5 million wildebeests and zebras. Sights like these are exhilarating to watch on TV, but unforgettable in person.

Compared to the buzzing wildlife activity during morning game drives, afternoon games drives require safari guides to use more of their knowledge and skill in tracking animals escaping the direct sunlight. Therefore, afternoon game drives are perfect opportunities to see cheetahs and lions relaxing in the shade. Your drivers will take you as closely as they can to the animals to give you a glimpse into the eyes of these sleepy predators.

Overall, the Serengeti will give countless memories to treasure for a lifetime. From making eye contact with giraffes and lions to discovering a pod of hippos in a shallow pond, observing animal behavior in the wild is a great learning experience to better understand the complexity and beauty of our world.

My pictures cannot capture the splendor of these national parks. At the end of your stay in Tanzania, you will have a newfound understanding of wildlife and cultural diversity. When leaving the Serengeti, we came across an elephant heard with two baby elephants walking along a road. Moments like these are the reason people for decades have traveled oceans to experience nature in its best form: untamed.

 

All Images © 2016 Justin Hartzler

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