Ngorongoro & the Crater Highlands: Caldera, Lakes & Maasai

This morning you leave Arusha and drive south-west to Tarangire National Park, arriving in time for lunch before an afternoon game drive. Tarangire is one of the most atmospheric parks in Africa, a rolling landscape of golden grassland studded with ancient, swollen baobab trees and threaded by the Tarangire River, which draws wildlife from far around in the dry season. You set out among the giant baobabs in search of the park's famous elephant herds, some of the largest in Tanzania, watching great families feed, dig for water in the riverbed and shelter beneath the enormous trees. You also look for lion, leopard, buffalo, giraffe, zebra and the tall fringe-eared oryx, amid an extraordinary richness of birdlife. As the golden light softens over the baobabs and herds, the scene is unforgettable. Rest well at your Tarangire camp.

After a final morning in Tarangire, you journey west and climb into the cool, green Ngorongoro highlands, part of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, where Maasai herders graze their cattle across rolling grasslands alongside the wildlife. As you ascend, the air freshens and the landscape opens into beautiful highland country of forest, hills and volcanic craters. You arrive at your lodge perched on the crater rim, with breathtaking views down into the vast caldera far below, its floor patterned with grassland, swamp and the soda lake, and often specked with distant wildlife. In the afternoon you might visit a Maasai village (boma), warmly and respectfully arranged, to meet families and learn about their timeless pastoral way of life, or simply savour the extraordinary panorama. As the cool highland evening falls, the anticipation of tomorrow's descent builds. Rest well on the rim of the Ngorongoro Crater.

Today you descend into the Ngorongoro Crater, the world's largest intact volcanic caldera and one of the great wonders of Africa. After breakfast you wind down the steep road onto the crater floor, entering a vast natural amphitheatre some twenty kilometres across, its walls rising six hundred metres all around. Within this bowl lives one of the densest concentrations of wildlife in Africa, and you spend the day exploring its grassland, swamp, soda lake and forest by 4x4. You may see all of the Big Five, with an excellent chance of the endangered black rhino grazing the open plain, alongside great lion prides, elephants with enormous tusks, buffalo, hippos wallowing in the pools, flamingos on the lake and countless plains game. You picnic on the crater floor amid the wildlife before climbing back to the rim. As the day ends, savour this extraordinary place. Rest well above the crater.

This morning you explore the beautiful Ngorongoro highlands on foot, an experience impossible in the parks below. Accompanied by an armed ranger and a Maasai guide, you walk across rolling grasslands grazed by Maasai cattle, to crater rims and viewpoints, or through montane forest alive with birds, perhaps to the smaller Olmoti crater or, as an option, deeper into the Empakaai crater with its flamingo-fringed lake, learning about the plants, wildlife and Maasai way of life along the way. In the afternoon you descend from the highlands to Lake Manyara National Park, set at the foot of the Rift Valley escarpment, and enjoy an afternoon game drive through its lush groundwater forest and along its flamingo-fringed lake, keeping watch for the famous tree-climbing lions, elephants, baboons, giraffe and abundant birdlife. As the day ends, you settle into your lodge. Rest well beside beautiful Lake Manyara.

This morning you enjoy a final game drive in Lake Manyara National Park, exploring its lush forest, open floodplain and lakeshore once more, looking again for the tree-climbing lions in the acacias, the flamingos and pelicans on the shallows, and the elephants, giraffe, hippos and rich birdlife, all beneath the towering Rift Valley wall. You then begin the scenic drive back towards Arusha, perhaps stopping for last souvenirs, and continue to Kilimanjaro International Airport for your onward departure (a light-aircraft flight can be arranged to save time). You leave having immersed yourself in the crater country of Tanzania, the baobabs and elephants of Tarangire, the wildlife-filled Ngorongoro Crater with its Big Five, the beautiful volcanic highlands and Maasai culture, and the tree-climbing lions and flamingos of Lake Manyara. The images stay vivid long after you land, the vast crater teeming with life, the green highlands, and the lions in the acacias. Tanzania offers spectacular wildlife and beauty in abundance, and you depart already dreaming of a return.