Arusha – Arusha National Park – Maasai village – Lake Natron – Serengeti NP – Ngorongoro – Datoga and Hazabe tribes
8 days – 7 nights
From $ 3700 USD/pers. Flights not included.
Degressive prices from 4 pers.
1st day: Kilimanjaro Airport – Arusha National Park
Arrival at the Kilimanjaro airport, customs check, baggage claim. Welcome by your driver/guide and short briefing. First night in Arusha.
2nd day: Arusha – Arusha National Park – Maasai village
You will leave early in the morning for your first immersion in Tanzanian lands at Arusha National Park. You will then walk, accompanied by a ranger, and approach your first wildebeest, zebras, giraffes and if you are lucky also some elephants.
In the afternoon, you will leave for a Maasai village. The Maasai are a tribe of about 300’000 people living along the Rift Valley between southern Kenya and northern Tanzania.
After a few hours of driving, you will arrive at the village, or boma in Maa. The village, built on a promontory, offers a 180 degree view of Kilimanjaro, Mount Meru and Ol Doinyo Lengai. The inhabitants will show you how they take care of their animals, how they feed on warm blood and milk, how they use the surrounding plants to heal themselves. You will sleep one night in a tent in the village. A cook will accompany you to allow you to eat more easily and without fear!
3rd and 4th days: Arusha – Lake Natron
Departure in the morning for a long trip to the banks of Lake Natron. The itinerary traverses the Rift Valley and will reveal a landscape of unrivaled beauty where giraffes munch on leaves from acacias, and where zebras, wildebeest, gazelles and ostriches have roamed free since millennia. Lake Natron is a salt lake, whose turquoise waters are dominated by Mount Gelaï and the last volcano in activity, the Ol Doinyo Lengaï. The high quantities of natron contained in the water, is potentially dangerous to humans and animals. However, more than 2.5 mln pink flamingos live on the banks of the lake, offering multiple opportunities to explore untouched, virginal nature. Arrival at the end of the day at the Lake Natron. Two nights at the Lake Natron.
Two activities are proposed during the full day on the lake’s edge:
· Early in the morning, a walk with a Maasaï guide through a Maasaï village all along the lake side, through herds of zebras, wildebeests, giraffes, ostriches, and pink flamingos.
· In the afternoon a two hours walk between river and mountain to a waterfall where the water is so clear that one can bathe and swim.
5th and 6th days: Lake Natron – Serengeti National Park
You will then leave the shores of Lake Natron in the morning and head for the Serengeti National Park. This park covers more than 14’000 km2 and is the oldest in Africa. The highlands are 1500 meters above sea level, and its name, pronounced Siringiti in Maa, means “the endless plain”. It is a mythical place for the diversity of its landscapes: the savannah with the immense plains in the south, the wooded and hilly regions in the west, the Kopje regions in the east and the shrubby savannah in the north. It is also mythical for its highest concentration of cats in the world, with nearly 3000 lions, cheetahs, leopards but also many buffaloes, elephants, giraffes, gazelles, etc.
7th day: Serengeti National Park – Ngorongoro Crater – Karatu
After two nights in the Serengeti, departure for the Ngorongoro Crater, more precisely called the caldera. It has an interior diameter of 12 ½ miles and incredibly rich fauna and flora in its center. You will experience exceptional moments among all the large mammals of East Africa (elephants, lions, rhinoceroses). In the middle of the crater is a lake formed by the rains, where hippopotamus and buffalos relaxing can also be seen. Night in Karatu.
8th day: Karatu – Datoga and Hazabe tribes – Arusha
You’ll leave early in the morning to visit the Hazabe and Datogas tribes. These are two tribes of hunter-gatherers who shoot with a bow and arrow in front of you before lighting a fire without matches to roast the animal they have just killed. They will show you too how to find and drink water one meter deep in the earth purified by the sand through which it flows. You’ll learn how to shoot with a bow and arrow and you will dance with them. Return to Arusha during the day for a return to Europe or to extend your stay in Zanzibar.
