5-Day Big 5 Safari Tours

Karibu Tanzania! On arrival at Kilimanjaro International Airport, or any other arrival point, your safari driver guide will be waiting to greet you and settle you into the vehicle for the comfortable road transfer to your lodge in Arusha.

Once you have had time to unwind after the journey, our safari coordinators will brief you on the days ahead. Stroll through the peaceful lodge gardens and, if the sky is clear, catch a glimpse of the rugged peaks of Mount Meru before a hearty dinner and your first night in Tanzania.

After breakfast at around 08:00 your safari guide collects you for the drive to Tarangire National Park, which covers some 2,850 km² about 120 km south-west of Arusha. The park is famous for its outstanding game viewing, especially in the dry season, when animals gather along the Tarangire River – the park's only permanent source of water. Rising in the Kondoa highlands, the river winds for about 120 km through the park before emptying into Lake Burunge.

Spend the day cruising across the park with a picnic lunch in the bush. Look out for giraffes and gazelles browsing the acacias, and with luck a small pack of African painted dogs, elusive kudus and shy elands keeping their distance.

In the afternoon a short, rewarding game drive takes you out of the park and on to the small, dusty town of Karatu, where dinner and the night await at your lodge.

After breakfast at around 08:00 your driver guide takes you into the Ngorongoro Conservation Area and down onto the crater floor – a huge, extinct volcanic crater with a permanent water supply that supports a remarkable variety of wildlife.

Expect large herds of buffalo, groups of hippos, great parades of elephants and dark-maned lions whose manes signal their health and strength. Look out too for the ostrich, the world's largest, fastest-running and strongest flightless bird, among many other species of birds.

Our guides – true search engines of the bush – do everything they can to make each moment memorable. Lunch is a picnic in the crater, followed by dinner and the night at your lodge.

Today you return to the Ngorongoro Conservation Area for a second descent to the crater floor, giving you time to linger at the swamps, pools and grasslands and to search for the animals you may have missed – above all the black rhino and the leopard.

With no need to hurry, your guide can wait patiently at a hippo pool, follow buffalo herds across the open plains or watch a pride of lions at rest. Flamingos and waders feed along the shores of the soda lake, while elephants browse in the fringes of the forest.

A picnic lunch is served in the crater before you climb back up the steep walls and return to your lodge for dinner and the night.

Your third day in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area brings one more descent to the crater floor, each visit revealing something new as the light, the weather and the movements of the animals change.

Spend the morning exploring corners of the 260 km² caldera you have not yet seen – from the open grasslands where zebras and wildebeest graze to the forested slopes and swamps where elephants and buffalo gather. Your guide will keep searching for the full Big Five, giving you every chance of completing the set.

After a picnic lunch you leave the crater and you drive down to Mto wa Mbu, the lively market village at the foot of the Rift Valley wall. Here a local guide leads you on a cultural experience among the many communities who live side by side, sharing their way of life, farms and stories.

Afterwards you are transferred safely and comfortably by road to Kilimanjaro International Airport for your onward international flight (transfer timing depends on your flight schedule), taking home memories that will stay with you for a lifetime.