Travel Date: August 2024
Duration: One week
Destination: Tanzania
My Rating: MUST SEE
Tanzania (Africa): A Dream Destination for Safari trip Enthusiasts
Tanzania (Africa) is one of the most fascinating destinations for safari trip lovers. With landscapes ranging from the endless plains of the Serengeti to the volcanic craters of Ngorongoro, passing through the dense forests of Lake Manyara and the wonders of Tarangire, this African country offers an unparalleled experience. Spending a week exploring Tanzania’s national parks is not just a trip—it is a deep immersion into pristine wilderness.
How to Get There and Travel Requirements
The main gateway for a safari in Tanzania is Kilimanjaro International Airport (JRO), located between Arusha and Moshi. From here, you can reach Arusha, the starting point for most safaris in the northern circuit. Another option is Dar es Salaam Airport, with domestic flights to Arusha or Lake Manyara. A third alternative, which I chose, is flying to Nairobi and then crossing into Tanzania by land. In this case, a transit visa for Kenya is required in advance.
From a bureaucratic standpoint, a tourist visa is required to enter Tanzania, which can be obtained online before departure or on arrival at the airport (eVisa or Visa on Arrival). The passport must be valid for at least six months. It is highly recommended to have insurance covering medical emergencies, including evacuation and tropical diseases.
Travel Organization
For this trip, I relied on Ozon Light Tours, a safari-specialized agency based in Arusha. Normally, I organize my trips independently, but in this case, I found it best to use a local service. Ozon Light Tours provided impeccable organization, arranging everything from my airport pick-up in Nairobi, border crossing to Tanzania, and transportation to Arusha.
In Arusha, we were welcomed by Augustino, a courteous and professional guide and driver who took care of my wife and me throughout the week. He was exceptional in ensuring we fully enjoyed our safari experience while explaining every animal encounter in detail. His driving skills were remarkable, especially considering the often challenging road conditions.
During our journey to the Serengeti, our Toyota Land Cruiser broke a suspension. Augustino ensured that another passing driver took us to the camp while he worked under the vehicle, fending off hyenas and lions as necessary. The next morning, he was at our tent on time, ready to continue the adventure.
Ozon Light Tours tailored the trip to our budget, ensuring we had the best possible experience within our spending capacity.
Typically, agencies that organize safaris offer a choice between three travel categories: low budget, mid-range, and luxury. Prices range approximately from $150 per person per day for the low-budget option to up to $1,500 for the luxury experience. In addition to this, a tip for the guide should be considered, usually around $10 per person per day.
US dollars are universally accepted, so it is not strictly necessary to have the local currency. In general, euros are also accepted, although you may occasionally encounter some difficulties.
Lunches are arranged by the agency and are prepared daily by the lodge where guests will be staying the following night. These meals are packed into a lunch box and taken on board. The main ingredients, which each chef adapts with their own variations, are rice and chicken.
Connectivity
For connectivity in Tanzania, I used Airalo. The connection was excellent even within the national parks. If you’d like to try it, you can use my referral code THEINT2929 for a welcome discount.
Climate and Best Time for a Safari in Tanzania
Tanzania’s climate is influenced by its equatorial location, with two rainy seasons: the long rains (March-May) and the short rains (November-December). The best times for a safari are:
Dry season (June-October): Cool and dry, ideal for wildlife sightings as animals gather around water sources. Short grass makes spotting wildlife much easier.
January-February: Excellent for witnessing the great wildebeest migration in the southern Serengeti (see map below).
November-December: Short rains make landscapes greener, and fewer tourists ensure a more exclusive experience. Tall grass makes spotting wildlife harder.
Temperatures vary by altitude. The Serengeti plains can reach 30°C (86°F), while the Ngorongoro Crater can drop to 5°C (41°F) at night.
In August, the Tanzanian winter, daily temperatures ranged from 15°C in the morning to 30°C in the afternoon. The night spent at Ngorongoro was extremely cold, despite wool blankets and hot water bottles. I highly recommend bringing warm clothing, especially for sleeping.
What to Wear and Bring
Clothing: Light long pants, long-sleeved shirts, a wide-brimmed hat, and a windproof jacket. In winter, bring a fleece or sweater for chilly mornings and nights.
Shoes: Sneakers are sufficient unless you plan a walking safari.
Accessories: Sunglasses, high SPF sunscreen (less necessary in winter), and DEET insect repellent, which I needed in mosquito-prone areas. A headlamp and an insulated water bottle may also be useful.
Medical Kit: Malaria prophylaxis (consult your doctor), basic antibiotics, anti-diarrheal medicine (a must!), bandages, and antiseptic.
Binoculars: Essential for distant wildlife spotting. A 10x42 or 8x32 model is ideal. Photographers will likely use their telephoto lens instead.
Photography
I have written a dedicated post on safari photography—check it out for tips!
TOILET FACILITIES
Before my departure, I came across a lot of conflicting information regarding the availability of toilet facilities during a safari. In some cases, I even read that there were none at all and that every need had to be taken care of in nature, under the watchful supervision of the guide.
On the contrary, all parks have rest areas with toilet facilities in conditions not much different from those found in any natural park in the Western world.
Swahili
Hi: Jambo
Thanks a lot: Asante sana
You're welcome: Karibu
Good morning: Habari ya asubuhi
Sorry: Pole
Take it easy: Pole pole
How are you: Habari gani
No problem: Hakuna matata
Exploring Tanzania’s National Parks
Arusha National Park (My Rating: 6/10)
Located near Arusha city, this small park is often used as an introduction to Tanzanian safaris. It features mountain forests, alkaline lakes with flamingos, and wildlife such as giraffes, zebras, and black-and-white colobus monkeys. The colobus monkeys are the park’s highlight, but overall, it is the least spectacular of Tanzania’s northern parks. The complete tour takes less than three hours.
Arusha National Park is a dense equatorial jungle, making wildlife spotting challenging except in occasional clearings where zebras, buffalos, and giraffes gather. The most remarkable features are its scenic landscapes with Mount Meru in the background.
In hindsight, I would have skipped Arusha National Park to spend an extra day in Serengeti National Park. However, if you include it in your itinerary, visit it first to build up to more impressive sights later.
Lake Manyara (My Rating: 8/10)
This compact yet biodiverse park is famous for its tree-climbing lions, a rare behavior in the rest of Africa. The landscape transitions from lush forests to the lake shores, attracting a multitude of birds, including pelicans and the iconic pink flamingos. Compared to Arusha National Park, the scenery and experience are entirely different. The safari area is nestled against the steep wall of a hill covered in baobabs, seemingly defying gravity—a spectacular view throughout the visit!
The vegetation is much sparser than in Arusha, making it easier to spot exotic animals such as hornbills, baboons, vervet monkeys, bushbucks, mongooses, elephants, and giraffes. The thrill of suddenly encountering an elephant or a giraffe in the bush is simply priceless.
Visually, the contrast between the red soil roads and the muted green foliage is striking (compared to Arusha’s vibrant green). The landscape is more varied, alternating between dense bush, open glades, and river crossings, ensuring that the view is never monotonous. The most unique feature is the lake shores, where the tide floods the woodland, creating otherworldly landscapes with trees emerging from the water.
Tarangire: The Elephant Sanctuary (My Rating: 9/10)
Less crowded than the Serengeti, Tarangire National Park is renowned for its massive elephant herds and majestic baobab trees. During the dry season, the waterholes become strategic spots for sighting lions, cheetahs, and leopards. The park is also a paradise for birdwatching, boasting over 500 recorded species.
Here, the landscape changes dramatically once again; the vegetation becomes noticeably sparser, and the terrain turns barren. However, this is not the savanna. A river meanders through the park, carving numerous bends and adding variety to the scenery. In some areas, the river digs into the earth, creating deep hollows where steep banks rise above the water. Observing the park from above, watching the river wind its way through and witnessing the elephant herds quenching their thirst, is a breathtaking spectacle. While at Lake Manyara, baobabs were mostly clinging to the hillsides, here they dominate the landscape, with some reaching truly majestic proportions.
The hallmark of Tarangire is its large elephant herds, which are guaranteed sightings at multiple points throughout the park. You can see them up close as they feed, move, care for their young, and cross rivers. However, Tarangire also gave me my first lion sightings and perhaps the most thrilling encounter of all: a magnificent cheetah. After fording the river, it climbed onto a vantage point to scan the horizon, exposing itself to the eager eyes of a crowd of jeeps competing for the best view.
Serengeti: The Ultimate Safari Experience (My Rating: 8/10)
The Serengeti embodies the essence of the African safari. Its vast plains host the Great Migration, one of the most spectacular natural events on Earth, where over two million wildebeests, zebras, and gazelles move in search of fresh pastures. Here, you have the chance to spot all of the Big Five: lion, leopard, elephant, rhino, and buffalo.
It was the Serengeti that led me to choose Tanzania as my destination. In my imagination, no word evokes Africa—its majestic landscapes and captivating allure—quite like "Serengeti." Before my departure, my expectations were sky-high. In retrospect, however, the experience didn’t quite live up to them, though I couldn’t bring myself to rate it below an 8—perhaps out of sheer reverence.
Let me start by saying that one day in the Serengeti is simply not enough. In fact, the travel agency's itinerary had listed two days, but this was misleading. According to park regulations, if you enter the park, for example, at 4 PM, you must exit by 4 PM the following day. Considering that the Serengeti, unlike other parks, is truly vast—14,000 square kilometers, roughly the size of Connecticut —the drive from the entrance gate to the overnight campsite alone can take two hours or more. This means that your entry day is essentially spent crossing the park just to reach your campsite, leaving only from dawn until 4 PM the next day for actual exploration. So much for the itinerary that promised two full days in this legendary park.
Moreover, the park’s sheer size means that animals are widely dispersed, requiring long drives before spotting any. Given these constraints, there was no time to witness the iconic wildebeest river crossing or the Great Migration itself, as in August, the herds are further north, near Kenya. The limited time also ruled out detours to see the kopjes, the distinctive rock formations where large predators often perch.
Having missed out on these defining aspects of the Serengeti, my day in the great park boiled down to a drive across the savanna, mainly spotting animals I had already seen in previous days: lions, ostriches, cheetahs (whose sight never gets old...), and then antelopes, wildebeests, buffaloes, zebras, gazelles, impalas, servals, and hyenas (not many, usually from a distance). There was also a leopard—distant, extremely distant, barely visible—and hippos. The hippos, in particular, were a novelty compared to the other parks, but the sighting took place at the famous "hippo pool," a bend in the river where dozens of hippos lazily congregate, surrounded by hundreds of tourists snapping photos. This gave the experience a somewhat artificial feel, almost as if the hippos had been conveniently arranged for the visitors' benefit.
A unique experience in the Serengeti was the overnight stay in the tented camp. Initially, I was concerned about safety, but it turned out to be an exhilarating experience.
First of all, it’s worth noting that the tents are more like actual buildings than simple canvas structures. With all the tents neatly aligned, the camp itself forms a solid structure that likely discourages animals from getting too close. Additionally, a guard is on duty throughout the night, deterring wildlife from approaching beyond a safe perimeter and escorting anyone who—due to an unavoidable necessity (which does not include basic needs, as each tent is equipped with a private bathroom)—needs to move around within the camp. The tents were incredibly luxurious, in fact, even more so than some of the hotel rooms I stayed in during the trip.
However, what makes the experience truly priceless is lying in bed at night and hearing the deep, guttural roar of a lion (seemingly just a few steps away, though probably not that close) echo through the darkness, sending an instant, primal shiver down your spine and making the hairs on your neck stand on end.
The camp that hosted us, Kilima Valley Tented Camp, was outstanding—from the welcoming choir to the food, the comfort of the tents, the communal tent with a bar service, and the nighttime bonfire, where we gazed at the stars while listening to the sounds of the savanna.
Looking back at my photos, I realize that calling the Serengeti "disappointing" would be unfair, and an 8/10 rating is indeed appropriate. The wildlife sightings were numerous and spectacular, and the landscape alone—monumental in every sense—would justify the long and exhausting journey. The only lingering regret is not having been able to experience the Serengeti in its full potential. Therefore, I reiterate my recommendation: when planning your trip, make sure to allocate at least three days (meaning at least two full days) to exploring the Serengeti.
Ngorongoro: The Crater of Abundance (My Rating: 10/10)
Declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the Ngorongoro Crater is a volcanic caldera that hosts a self-sustaining ecosystem with one of the highest concentrations of wildlife in Africa. Here, you can admire black rhinos, dark-maned lions, hippos, and an extraordinary variety of antelopes. Thanks to the unique geography of the crater, wildlife sightings are almost guaranteed.
While planning this trip, I fell in love with Ngorongoro just by looking at its photos, and my expectations for it were as high as those for the Serengeti. But in this case, not only were my expectations met—they were completely shattered. Ngorongoro is one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen on this Earth, with a beauty so intense it is almost painful. At the end of the day, as our Toyota climbed the crater’s slopes to leave, I had to fight back tears—moved by the sheer beauty of what I had just witnessed, by the incredible experience of the day, and by the sorrow of having to leave this place behind.
The landscapes within the caldera are breathtaking. The towering volcanic walls encircle the scenery in a perfect 360-degree embrace, while clouds roll down the slopes as herds of animals move below across the golden savanna. It is the spectacle of life itself—an entire, untouched, self-sustaining ecosystem enclosed within a volcano.
In Ngorongoro, I witnessed a majestic male lion single-handedly keep a pack of 20 hyenas at bay, finally walking away victorious with a wildebeest carcass between his jaws. I saw a lioness stalking a zebra for hundreds of meters, crouching low before launching an unsuccessful attack. I saw a zebra standing frozen in disbelief, watching a pair of lions devour another zebra that had just been taken down. I saw hippos battling each other, measuring their strength in a fierce contest.
The temperature inside Ngorongoro is much colder than the rest of Tanzania, which likely encourages more daytime animal activity. In other parks, most wildlife is active at dawn and dusk, with little movement during the hotter hours, but in Ngorongoro, animals remain active throughout the day. This, combined with the grandeur of the landscapes, makes Ngorongoro a truly unique and magnificent destination.
In Ngorongoro, we stayed at Kuhama Camp, and my opinion of it mirrors my review of Kilima Valley. The tents were luxurious, the food excellent, and the service outstanding. As mentioned, the cold here was intense, which slightly diminished the comfort of the overnight stay—we certainly didn’t linger outside by the fire, but instead rushed into bed, where we found a blessed and much-appreciated hot water bottle waiting for us. The camp staff was incredibly attentive to our needs, making sure we had everything required to stay warm. Despite the cold, Kuhama Camp was truly fantastic in every way.
The Toyota Land Cruiser
One last mention goes to another key protagonist of any safari: the Toyota Land Cruiser. If you have opted for the safari by car (the so-called game drive, a safarin a 4x4 vehicle with a pop-up roof), this will be your home for the whole duration of the safari.
A week of safari means covering hundreds of kilometers aboard this armored beast of the savanna, often on rough, bumpy roads inside the parks, or on smooth, paved highways outside them.
Spending an entire week inside a Toyota modified for safari comes with a few considerations:
Prepare to be covered in dust. Not just you, but everything you bring along. If you have photography gear, I recommend checking my dedicated post on that topic. For everything else, plan accordingly—some might want to carry a small cloth that can be dampened to frequently clean their face and hands, though I would avoid wet wipes for environmental reasons.
Couples should strongly consider booking an entire vehicle for themselves. A Land Cruiser is spacious for two, offering plenty of room for binoculars, cameras, luggage, coolers, and other essentials. However, if you fill all six seats, the trip can quickly become claustrophobic—especially when you spot a lion and everyone scrambles for the best view; obviously, a private safari costs more than a group one, but it is money well spent.
The Land Cruiser is extremely comfortable, and even after a week of bouncing along dirt roads at high speeds, the ride isn’t unbearably rough. However, one sensory experience you won’t forget is the noise—the clatter of metal, the roar of the engine, the crunch of gravel. It’s a constant, deafening soundtrack that seeps into your skin and, on longer drives, will have you wishing for your destination to arrive sooner. I don’t have a perfect solution for this, but if you're sensitive to noise, foam earplugs might help.
There are plenty of power outlets inside the Toyota for charging all your devices. However, they are American-style sockets, so Europeans will need an adapter. Also, the fit isn’t always secure, and with all the vehicle’s bumps and vibrations, your plug may keep disconnecting. I highly recommend bringing some strong adhesive tape to fasten your charger in place—otherwise, you’ll constantly find your cable slipping out of the socket.
How to Behave During a Safari
There are no particularly strict rules to follow—common sense should always prevail, and your guide will provide the few necessary instructions that aren’t already dictated by logic.
However, the ethics of a safari are fundamental to preserving the environment and ensuring safety:
Silence and discretion: Wildlife is highly sensitive to noise. Avoid loud conversations.
Do not feed the animals: Altering their natural behavior can have dangerous consequences.
Stay inside the vehicle: Exiting is only allowed in designated areas.
Responsible photography: Avoid using flash and always respect the safe distance from animals.
Sustainability: Choose certified tour operators that adhere to responsible tourism practices.
Dangers
At no point during the safari did I ever feel in danger. Your guide will take care of every aspect of your safety. Even when, in the middle of the Serengeti, our Toyota broke a suspension, forcing us to step out of the vehicle and leading to a curious hyena approaching us, I always had the impression that our guide had everything under control.
Before the trip, I researched potential dangers and learned that Tanzania is home to some of Africa’s most venomous snakes. However, at no point were we in situations where an encounter with a snake seemed likely. I have already mentioned the safety of the tented camps.
I also wandered through local markets carrying expensive photography equipment, and not once did I feel uncomfortable or sense any ill intentions from those around me.
The only real issue we encountered was when my wife suffered a severe case of food poisoning—oddly, I did not, despite eating the same food. This reinforces my recommendation to bring medications for food poisoning, just in case.
The only aspect that made me somewhat uneasy was the road transfers, particularly the ascent and descent along the steep walls of Ngorongoro Crater. The road is narrow, unpaved, and extremely busy, with hundreds of safari vehicles speeding up and down. In a few instances, I felt a bit nervous, but the best thing you can do is trust a reputable tour operator that carefully selects its guides and drivers.
Final Thoughts
A safari in Tanzania is more than just a trip—it’s an experience that leaves an indelible mark, a total immersion in a raw, primordial, and spectacular nature. From the great herds moving across the Serengeti to the evocative silence of Ngorongoro, every single day is a discovery.
With the right preparation and awareness, this journey transforms into an extraordinary adventure, where direct contact with nature blends seamlessly with respect for one of the world’s most unique ecosystems.
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