East African Wonders with Jenny Revesz

Upon arrival at the Kilimanjaro International Airport in Arusha, you will be met by Abby, and transferred to the Tulip Hotel in Arusha city. It will likely be late in the evening and you’ll be tired from your travels. We’ll get you to the hotel as quickly as possible and to a wonderful cozy bed.

The African Tulip is an elegant and charming luxury boutique hotel located in the heart of Arusha. A warm and friendly welcome awaits guests to their 29 guest rooms. Whether you're on your way to safari, or just returning, afternoons by the pool or relaxing in the gardens are the perfect way to unwind. The Tulip also has the Zanzibar Bar, Baobab Restaurant, a business centre and curio shop.

Enjoy a slow start to your day so that you can recover from your long flights. We will have a short briefing at 9:00 and depart at 9:15 for our visit to Arusha’s bustling main market. This is a highlight – the colours, interactions with the “market mamas” and experience of our main food and supplies market is a great introduction to Tanzania and its people.

Afterwards, we will take you for a special visit to a local orphanage, the Cradle of Love Baby Home. As you know, poverty and diseases have devastated Africa and left thousands of children orphans. Your visit will provide you with a chance to lend support to the community. Expect to be touched and emotionally moved by the incredible spirit and hope of children. Previous to your departure for Africa a list of items that could be donated will be provided.

After your wonderful visit with the babies, we’ll stop for lunch at a local restaurant Abby goes to regularly. Enjoy some Tanzanian food in a welcoming local environment.

We will return to Arusha’s centre after lunch and drop you at your hotel. Enjoy a relaxing evening, including dinner. Rest and recover – tomorrow the adventures continue!

After breakfast, we depart for Tarangire National Park. On the way, we pass by Maasai villages and small towns providing a fascinating perspective. The main roads are newly paved but the side and national park roads aren’t always the best so prepare for some bumps along the way. We will travel in our 4WD Toyota Land Cruiser – this is a private safari so you’ll only have Abby and a driver with you. Abby is your safari guide but your driver is also a licensed guide and they will be with you for the entire safari, teaching you about the nature, the geography, and the culture.

Credit: Ian Smith

Spend today exploring Tarangire National Park. Upon arrival, we will set out for a day of game driving in one of Tanzania’s outstanding reserves. Tarangire National Park covers 2,600 square kilometers and is on the traditional migration route of several species of the wildlife. Resident lion, giraffe, and zebra are common at any season; Tarangire is noted for its concentration of elephants, outstanding baobab trees and splendid vistas of rolling savannah and acacia woodland.

Your first game drive will be a very exciting experience. We will take our time and bring a lovely picnic lunch to enjoy at a picnic site in the park. Your first meal in the African bush! By late afternoon, we’ll leave the park and proceed to our lodge, Maramboi Tented Camp

This is a unique opportunity to experience and explore the Tarangire and Manyara ecosystem. Maramboi Tented Camp offers permanent camp facilities and endless vistas of rolling golden grasslands and palm-lined desert between Tarangire and Manyara Lake. A visit to the area is essential for anyone interested in evolution and the origins of Mankind and an explanation of the Rift Valley and Africa's big picture. It is a complete semi desert experience focusing on game drives.

An impressive landscape from the Rift Valley gives the visitor an amazing natural welcome to an area extraordinarily rich in wildlife. The camp offers stunning views of the Manyara National Park, Rift Valley, Ngorongoro highlands and on clear days even Oldonyo Lengai a sacred mountain to the Maasai.

Today is your day to experience the Maasai tribe, in an intimate and personal interaction that few tourists get. To visit a Maasai village with one of its distinguished elder warriors is unforgettable.

After breakfast, travel to Engaruka. On the way, you pass by Maasai villages and small towns providing a fascinating perspective. The roads aren’t always the best so prepare for some bumps along the way. It will also be dusty. The vistas will be fascinating, young boys herding their flocks, the rift valley escarpment rising above and the Maasai sacred mountain, Oldonyo Lengai in the background. The trip will take about 1.5 hours but the time will fly by.

The day will be spent engaging in spontaneous cultural interactions. Abby is expected to greet everyone and this, in and of itself, is a fascinating experience. Villagers will come up to the vehicle to say hello. Unlike normal tourists, you will be welcomed into their environment. The locals will allow you to take their photo facilitated by Abby – they normally won’t do this but Abby’s presence opens the doors to everything. The village is typical and has been the same for millennia. Expect to see many faces that you won’t soon forget. All of the photos below are from the village taken by clients over the past 18 months.

We’ll bring a picnic lunch and visit Abby’s parent’s home. Enjoy some time with his parents. They have one of the most unexpected and amazing gardens – a water-drip system is used to grow hundreds of vegetables and fruit that feed many in the village.

We’ll proceed onto the Ngorongoro Farmhouse, with many memories and photos to take back to show your family. This is a day you’ll never forget!

Live the legendary atmosphere of past times on a colonial style coffee plantation farmhouse. Hand plaited thatched roof tops, ample verandas and colonial interiors at 5-star Ngorongoro Farm House, a small and exclusive hotel built on a 500-acre coffee plantation, all of which has been designed to take you to the comfort and style of past times. Take a walk around the farm to contemplate the daily activities, relax in the fragrant gardens or enjoy the spectacular sunsets with the Oldeani volcano as a backdrop.

A wonderful stop-off during a safari on the north circuit of Tanzania and a privileged place from where one can visit the crater or enjoy activities such as walking safaris to the volcano or excursions to Lake Eyasi on the Rift Valley still inhabited by the Hadzabe tribe. The lodge has 52 chalet-style rooms built in the colonial farm style decorated with local materials and tasteful details. There is a beautiful pool that kids love and gorgeous gardens that attract all kinds of bee-eaters, rollers and other bird life

Your morning begins with a deluxe breakfast at the Ngorongoro Farmhouse. Enjoy the morning and this wonderful property with its pool and coffee plantation. We’ll depart for our journey to Ngorongoro Crater after lunch. On the way, we pass by Maasai villages providing a fascinating African perspective. Ask any questions you wish along the way!

Credit: Ian Smith

We enter the Ngorongoro Conservation Area and ascend to the exterior of the crater reaching its rim and here you take a wonderful glimpse of what has often been referred to as the “Eighth Wonder of the World”. The Ngorongoro Crater is the remains of a once massive volcano, nearly three million years old, on the eastern border of the Serengeti National Park. Now collapsed and eroded to leave the world's largest unbroken, unflooded caldera, it forms an extraordinarily fertile ‘bowl’ in the midst of rolling highlands, with permanent water sources and steep sides ensuring that the wildlife that thrives here has little reason to leave. Situated in the midst of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, a wildlife preservation area roughly the size of Crete, the crater forms an important aspect of the northern Tanzania safari circuit.

We’ll descend into the crater for an afternoon safari, your first of two visits to this outstanding place. Enjoy the afternoon and a picnic lunch in the crater.

After your safari, we ascend from the crater. We will arrive at the Ngorongoro Serena Lodge in late afternoon and will undoubtedly be happy to wash up, enjoy the spectacular views and have a cocktail at the friendly bar and enjoy a great dinner overlooking the crater. You’ll likely notice the altitude and the cool highlands air. Drink lots of water and grab a fashionable wrap for the evening! Evening entertainment is provided priori to dinner at the bar area.

The 5-star Ngorongoro Serena Lodge itself is an architectural marvel built on the rim of the collapsed volcano that can boast the most magnificent views over the crater floor, home to vast herds of buffalo, wildebeest and zebra, the rare and endangered black rhino, mighty bull elephant, cheetah, leopard, lion and herds of gazelle and hartebeest. Most of the wildlife is found on the crater floor, a short drive from the lodge. High on the crater rim it can be a little chilly in the lodge in the evenings and, during the colder times of the year, log fires blaze gloriously in the restaurant and bar and central heating and hot water bottles in the bedrooms ensure a cozy stay. Within an area which has been inhabited by man and beast for over three million years, Ngorongoro Serena Lodge offers calm and tranquility, allowing its guests to soak up the sensations of viewing the spectacular whilst enjoying the highest levels of service and attention.

You will depart very early for your second crater visit from the Ngorongoro Serena Safari Lodge in order to be first into the crater. Descend to the floor of the crater and have an experience of a lifetime, as you watch the literary thousands of animals that Africa has to offer. The unique eco-system supports the delicate balance of predator and prey in the endless quest for survival. The crater is the spectacular stalking ground of around 20,000 to 30,000 wild animals at any one time, the most densely packed concentration of wildlife in Africa. The crater is known as 'the eighth wonder of the world', and attracts a growing number of visitors each year.

In order to preserve the quality of the experience and the environment, measures have had to be taken to limit the number of people inside the crater at any one time, and safaris are now limited to one per day for each vehicle either as a morning or an afternoon adventure. You chose a morning trip as the game is very active in the morning and this also gave us a chance to have a safari breakfast served by the hippo pool. You will return to your lodge for a late lunch in the dining room with spectacular views of the crater below. There is always local Maasai or musical entertainment in the lodge before the dinner call at 7:30.

After a crater-view breakfast at the Serena Lodge, you will depart for the short grass plains of the Serengeti (Seronera area) where the miracle of the migration takes place. The drive is incredible with amazing vistas of the Great Rift Valley.

We will circumnavigate the rim of the crater on our way to Serengeti National Park via Olduvai Gorge, the site of Louis and Mary Leakey’s renowned archaeological discoveries. Their findings include some of the man’s earliest known ancestral remains. We’ll receive an experts’ briefing about the Gorge and visit the small museum.

Tanzania's oldest and most popular national park, also a world heritage site and recently proclaimed a 7th world wide wonder, the Serengeti is famed for its annual migration, when some six million hooves pound the open plains, as more than 200,000 zebras and 300,000 Thomson's gazelles join the wildebeest’s trek for fresh grazing. Yet even when the migration is quiet, the Serengeti offers arguably the most scintillating game-viewing in Africa: great herds of buffalo, smaller groups of elephant and giraffe, and thousands upon thousands of eland, topi, kongoni, impala and Grant’s gazelle.

The spectacle of predator versus prey dominates Tanzania’s greatest park. Golden-maned lion prides feast on the abundance of plain grazers. Solitary leopards haunt the acacia trees, while a high density of cheetahs prowls the southeastern plains. Almost uniquely, all three African jackal species occur here, alongside the spotted hyena and a host of more elusive small predators, ranging from the insectivorous aardwolf to the beautiful serval cat

But there is more to Serengeti than large mammals. Gaudy agama lizards and rock hyraxes scuffle around the surfaces of the park’s isolated granite koppies. A staggering 100 varieties of dung beetle have been recorded, as have 500-plus bird species, ranging from the outsized ostrich and bizarre secretary bird of the open grassland, to the black eagles that soar effortlessly above the Lobo Hills.

As enduring as the game viewing is, so is the liberating sense of space that characterizes the Serengeti Plains, stretching across sunburnt savannah to a shimmering golden horizon at the end of the earth. Yet, after the rains, this golden expanse of grass is transformed into an endless green carpet flecked with wildflowers. And there are also wooded hills and towering termite mounds, rivers lined with fig trees and acacia woodland stained orange by dust.

Enjoy a game drive along the way and arrive at your lodge in time late afternoon, with plenty of time for a rest or a refreshing dip in the pool before dinner.

The Kubu Kubu Serengeti Tented Camp is a true African dream. Kubu Kubu is the latest addition to the portfolio of properties of Tanganyika Wilderness Camps. This camp is strategically located to ensure that all areas of the Serengeti are within reach of our guests, including legendary locations like the famous Maasai kopjes, the Museum of Olduvai Gorge, Seronera and the Grumeti River.

It has been designed with a modern African decorative style that creates a fresh and bright atmosphere, but very cozy and with the right amount of luxury. Guests can attend to the show of the Great Migration from the comfort of their tents. This is an all-inclusive camp with all drinks (alcoholic, soft drinks, etc.) included. There is also a pool to enjoy after your safari adventures.

Spend two days in the truly incredible Seronera Serengeti area with both morning and afternoon game viewing drives. The morning drive will be in the area surrounding the Camp. The wildlife defines the Serengeti-countless zebra; buffalo, gazelle, wildebeest and other species make it their home. The terrain is the main stage for the great wildebeest migration, an awesome spectacle involving millions of these beasts.

We have timed your safari to do the best to coincide with the incredible spectacle of the annual wildebeest migration when thousands of wildebeest are completing the return from the birthing plains with their new calves travelling in tow. The goal is to put you in the potentially ideal place to view the incredible wonder of the Serengeti Park. If the universe is smiling and if your timing is right, you will witness something that words can’t truly describe – the completion of the birthing cycle of the migration. Imagine viewing a million wildebeest... each one driven by the same ancient rhythm, fulfilling its instinctive role in the inescapable cycle of life.

During the afternoon heat, relax in the lounge, chatting with the staff. There are often animals wandering right in front of the camp so always have your camera with you! One of the days, we will have an “Out Of Africa” picnic lunch in the bush. What a wonderful way to remember the short grass plains of the Serengeti.

On your final day in the Serengeti, you’ll enjoy the unforgettable hot-air balloon ride over the plains. The balloon ride is always a bucket-list highlight. Travelling silently above the Serengeti National Park with herds of animals below at sunrise makes for a lifetime high experience.

The balloons land in a spectacular spot where a white glove bush luxury breakfast is served. Champagne bottles are uncorked and a decadent feast begins. It’s not uncommon for a giraffe to wander past while dining!

After our feast, balloon certificates are handed to each guest and we depart for more game driving with the wildebeest herds and the outstanding other species of animals, birds and plants in Africa’s Garden of Eden.

After breakfast, you will be transferred and dropped off at the local airstrip with your guide, for your scheduled safari flight to Arusha. This is a direct flight, giving you a great opportunity to see more of the African landscape from an aerial perspective. The flight itself will be an amazing experience.

Fly over the countryside of Tanzania, over the Serengeti short-grass plains, Rift Valley and Ngorongoro Crater and onto Arusha. You will be provided a boxed lunch so that you won’t go hungry on the journey. You’ll depart at 10:15. It will be time to say an undoubtedly sad good-bye or “Kwaheri” in Swahili to Abby your guide.

You’ll be met at the Arusha domestic airport and transferred to the Arusha Serena Hotel with day rooms so that you can rest, pack and prepare for your late evening flight home. Enjoy an early dinner at this gorgeous property overlooking Lake Duluti. We will transfer you to Kilimanjaro Airport in the evening.