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Feb 2023

Tanzania
Africa

The most common reasons to visit Tanzania are for a safari at the famous Serengeti National Park, to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, or to complete some volunteer work in the African communities. I would suggest doing all three if you can when you visit. It is also a great and popular honeymoon destination and trip (hint hint, nudge nudge). The safari is a must, Kilimanjaro is very cool if you are into hiking, and it is so nice to be able to volunteer and help out if you find an opportunity. 

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To start, here are some high-level overall tips for your trip to Tanzania, that apply no matter what you choose to do once you get there:

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  • You need to get a tourist visa beforehand and you can do so online here. Print it out and bring a copy with you for customs when you arrive. 

  • Bring lots of US $ cash in smaller bills ($20s, $10s, $5s, and $1s). It is fine to bring more cash (we had no issues in terms of safety, just keep it on you or in the hotel safe), and you will need it more than you may realize for purchasing drinks at the lodges, souvenirs, and tips . Budget $40 a day on the safari to be safe. More if you drink more. 

  • You cannot bring single use plastic bags into Tanzania. They check your luggage at the airport and will confiscate any that you have. Only resealable, reusable bags are allowed.

  • Bring USB not the new USB C chargers. If there are chargers available (like in the Jeep for the safari or in some hotels), they will be USB or plugs

  • Bring a travel adapter to use the plugs. It is different from America. You can get one on Amazon like this here. 

  • Bring face wipes for yourself and keep them handy - there are a lot of dirt roads in Tanzania and you often need to keep windows open as you're driving (they don't use AC), so your face can get quite dirty. Thank me later. 

  • If you are coming for a honeymoon, no matter what the activity you are coming for, make sure to tell people! They love honeymooners and love to make your stay extra special with decorations, wine, and lots of congratulations. 

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Of course, I would 100% recommend taking a safari if you do come to Tanzania. They have arguably the best national park in the world for game driving and it is so unique and special to see the wild animals up close in their natural habitat. Here are some tips, specifically for booking and planning your safari:

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  • First, you need to pick a safari company. There are over 1000 in Tanzania, so the pickings are anything but slim. Websites like SafariBookings.com and TripAdvisor can help aid in the search. We did our safari with Safari by Z and I would highly recommend them. It was a private safari which allowed us to customize our itinerary as we wanted, which is something I think you should definitely look for. The process was smooth, the staff was so kind and helpful, our guide was amazing, the entire trip was perfect. 

  • Confirm whether your safari will be private or group to ensure it is in line with your wants

  • Confirm that your safari company includes unlimited mileage for your tour, so you can game drive as often as you wish 

  • Ensure your safari company provides cold water and drinks for your game driving 

  • Ensure you have an English-speaking (or whatever your native language might be) safari guide for your tour 

  • Request or confirm that your tour company books your camps and lodges in the parks on a full-board basis - meaning they include all 3 meals 

  • Make sure your company has transfers to and from the airport set up for you. It is quite hectic when you land and this will be a much welcomed bonus

  • There is A LOT of driving involved in a safari. So, try to plan your itinerary efficiently to avoid extra mileage. Focus on parks and areas you really want to visit and prioritize based on location. I have provided recommendations below on an efficient itinerary

  • We asked our guide what the best time to go on a safari was and he told us June to October during the dry season. The migration is coming back to the area and there is a place in the park where you can see animals trying to cross crocodile infested waters, which as you can imagine, would be quite interesting to see. He did share that this is also the busiest time to go on a safari, and some of the hottest months in Africa, so be prepared for both of those items if you choose that time. We went in February and found the temperatures manageable, and the amount of other safari goers was great with other people to say hi to in the camps, but rare lineups and pileups when viewing the animals

  • Bring supplies for the Maasai people you drive by, or various schools or orphanages. School supplies, clothing, hats, sunscreen, bugspray, non-perishable food items, toiletries are all great ideas to bring for the African children you meet

  • Wear your sunscreen, use SPF lip balm, and bring a hat! Due to the driving, you won't feel like you are getting burnt but you are still in Africa and the sun is hot. Re-apply, protect your face, and your scalp 

  • You will be driving on dusty roads through the national parks and will want to look out the open window or roof of your vehicle. Along with face wipes, bring a scarf or a bandana to cover your face or mouth if the dirt will bother you 

  • Confirm with your tour guide if they will be providing binoculars and phone chargers in the vehicle. If they do, of course, you do not need to bring these. If they don't, make sure to back them. A rechargeable or solar phone charger is a great idea

  • Drinks at almost all the camps and lodges are extra, and they only accept cash. Remember to budget in $6-$15 USD per drink depending on the drink and the camp, along with tips for the camp staff

  • Again, you will have some long drives on the safari. If you have trouble sitting still in longer car rides, bring headphones with you and download some movies or podcasts, or bring a book to keep you entertained 

  • Most safari tours will book you at lodges on a full board basis - meaning they feed you breakfast, lunch and dinner. Commonly, you will be having breakfast around 7am, lunch around noon or 1pm, and dinner around 7pm. If you will get hungry and need to eat between these times, pack some extra snacks with you - granola bars, fruit, candy - whatever it might be to tide you over 

  • If you are a coffee drinker and coffee is not provided in your tour, pack a thermos or insulated bottle with you and fill it with coffee at the hotel or camp in the morning. These can be long, exciting days, and a coffee might be just what you need to keep going after the 2pm slump. Plus, the lodges and camps have great (and free) coffee 

  • I took over 1500 photos for 5 days of safari so make sure there is room in your phone for all your photos, or bring a digital camera 

  • A common tip for a safari guide is $10-$30 US per person per day, so plan accordingly and bring the extra cash 

  • The lodges and camps do provide shampoo, conditioner, and soap, so no need to bring that with you unless there are specific brands you might need 

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As a recommended itinerary, I would suggest 1 day of hiking at Mount Kilimanjaro, 4 days of safari - visiting Lake Manyara, Serengeti National Park, and the Ngorogoro Crater, before continuing on to a beach holiday in Zanzibar. Here is what that would look like if you go:

DAY 01
KILIMANJARO

Climb

To start, landing at the Kilimanjaro Airport is fairly quick and painless. Just remember to bring your Tanzanian Visa printout with you, and you should be through in just a few minutes. From the airport, meet your driver outside and transfer ~1h to your Moshi town accommodations near Mount Kilimanjaro. The Weru Weru River Lodge is a good option for your accommodation in this area. The staff is welcoming and kind, the food is simple but good, and the rooms (bed, bathroom, etc.) are comfortable, clean and large with a nice balcony. Check in, have some dinner, maybe go for a swim, and relax for the evening. 

 

The next morning, head to Mount Kilimanjaro for your hike. The mountain itself is about an hour away from Moshi town, which can quickly turn to two hours with the traffic in the area. At Mount Kilimanjaro, you can choose how long or strenuous of a hike you want to do. The shortest and easiest being a ~8km hike to base camp that takes ~6 hours roundtrip, and the longest and most difficult being a hike to the summit that takes ~5 days in total. Unless you are a serious hiker and trying to check another mountain off your list, I would recommend just the hike to base camp for your visit here. Remember to wear comfortable shoes and bring a jacket (the climate does change somewhat drastically as you hike up the mountain). Remember to also wear comfortable shoes and thick socks to avoid blisters, bring a $10 tip per person per guide, extra water for drinking, and a backpack with room for a lunchbox. There are washrooms at the check in to the national park that I would recommend using before you start, and a washroom at the base camp to use before you begin descending. Your destination when hiking to base camp is actually not even base camp itself, but a very unique and interesting crater. Here is a video of the hike up and the crater. There are some steeper areas and rocky pathways to get there but it is a nice, active way to start your trip before a lot of game driving. Pro tip: ask the tour guides to stop and buy some beers from a shop on the side of the road to enjoy on your drive back to your next hotel. Your next accommodation will be in Arusha, as Arusha is a central location common and convenient for the start of safari adventures, so stay here on your second night before the safari begins. Arusha is ~3 hours from Mount Kilimanjaro so bring a book, a movie, or a pillow with you for the journey. The Four Points Hotel is a great option for accommodation in Arusha with a great restaurant, delicious buffet breakfast, and large rooms with AC and extremely comfortable beds and bedding. It is the perfect place to rest up before your safari.

By the way, if you are not big into hiking and would rather get right to the safari part of your trip, feel free to skip this part all together and transfer from the airport right to Arusha to begin your vacation. It is cool and a nice activity to diversify your trip, but definitely not a must do. 

DAY 02
LAKE MANYARA

Park

Now begins the safari! Tanzania is known for the famous Serengeti National Park for game viewing and driving, but there are many other national parks that you can visit as well during your time there. Two of those being Lake Manyara National Park and Tarangire National Park that are both in between Arusha, and Serengeti National Park. Serengeti is 4+ hours from Arusha, while the other two, more in the middle, are just over 2 hours. With this in mind, I would recommend stopping at either one of either Lake Manyara or Tarangire and spending the night in the neighboring town of Karatu on your first day of safari, before continuing on to Serengeti after this. Personally, I would do Lake Manyara over Tarangire, as it is much smaller and easier to get to, has very nice trees and vegetation to look at, less bothersome flies and bugs than Tarangire, and the chance to see the famous tree climbing lions! On the drive to Lake Manyara you will get more views of the Tanzanian landscape and see some of the Maasai people living on the land, herding their livestock on the side of the road. When you arrive at Lake Manyara, there is a washroom at the entrance and a small shop where you can purchase coffee, drinks, or snacks as needed. As you drive through the park, keep your eyes open for lots of baboons, giraffes, zebras, elephants, impala, and if you're lucky - a lion in the unique umbrella trees they have there. Enjoy your first sightings of wild animals and take lots of photos! Your guide will stop for lunch at a picnic area in the park and provide you with your boxed lunch for the day. Keep an eye for baboons hanging nearby eyeing up your food, or even elephants walking by. Then, when you are done your game drive for the day, start your ~1h long drive to the town of Karatu to check in to your accommodation for the evening. I would highly recommend staying at the Acacia Farm Lodge while you are in Karatu. The Acacia Farm Lodge is a wonderful place with superb staff, a personal maid and butler assigned upon arrival along with a wet cloth and a juice, and a nice goodbye song and dance upon departure. Here is a tour of the Acacia Farm Lodge. The lobby and grounds are gorgeous with a large, clean pool and great pool and bar area. The private casita rooms are huge and so comfortable with a King bed, a living room with a TV, great AC, and french press coffee with the beans grown on site. As an added bonus, the food and the margaritas were delicious. Don't forget to tip your butler and your maid before you leave - $10 or $20 each is perfect. 

DAY 03+04
SERENGETI

Safari

The next morning, after an amazing night at Acacia Farm Lodge, you will begin on your way to Serengeti National Park. The southern area of Serengeti you will be driving through today is about ~3h plus some from your lodging, but there is so much to see on the way. Keep an eye for more Maasai villages and people and many baboons playing in the trees or on the ground on the side of the road as you make your way to Serengeti National Park. On your way here from Karatu, you will also pass and drive through Ngorogoro National Park, which is a large crater famous for having the highest concentration of wild animals in the world. On your way to Serengeti today you will just drive around the rim of the Ngorogoro Crater, but it is beautiful to see nonetheless. You will return back to go down into the crater on the last day of your safari, heading back to Arusha. After passing through the rim of the crater in Ngorogoro National Park, you will enter the southern area of Serengeti National park, commonly called Ndutu. Here is a video of our Serengeti Day 1 experience. As you can see in the video, here, in February, you can expect to see the migration with 2.5 million wildebeests, along with tons of zebras and impala migrating away from the area as the climate changes. It is very cool to see with so many of the wild animals up close. You can also see some families or giraffes in the area! After you are finished your game driving through Ndutu with the migration, continue up through the central part of Serengeti on the way to your accommodation for the evening. This part of the park is remarkable as well and just because you are heading in the direction of your accommodation by no means means that your game drives are finished for the day. On the way, keep your eyes out for cheetahs, leopards, elephants, lions!! (lots of lions!), and the beautiful plains of the park. This was the best part of Serengeti in my opinion, with our most active game drive yet, seeing so many wild animals in their natural habitat - including a family of lions having a nap in the sun, three cheetahs feasting on an impala, elephants grazing in the grass and through a stream, and baby lions having a nap under a tree. Eventually, though, the sun goes down and the game drives will end for the evening, and when the time does come, head to the fabulous Nyumbani Luxury Tented Camp  - your home away from home (which is actually the translation of Nyumbani) for the next two nights in the Serengeti. Here is a tour of the Nyumbani Luxury Tented Camp. This tented camp is truly as the name suggests: luxury. The grounds are amazing, the room is perfect with stunning decor and everything you might need including slippers, a robe, flashlight, bug spray, lotion, etc. They even provide turn down service while you are at dinner so you can return back to your tent and slip right into bed comfortable. They they fold back your blankets, remove your throw pillows, and heat up and place a heating bad on your bed for you for the most comfortable sleep. The food was amazing, the wine even better, and the staff somehow even better. Their common area also has wildlife books and games to keep you entertained for the evening if you so require. Don't forget to check out the "bush TV" as well, where you can sit by the campfire, and enjoy a fantastic glass of wine as you watch the sun set over the stunning landscape as the buffalos graze in the grass nearby before dinnertime. Now, again, as the name suggests, this camp is a luxury camp, and with that, comes a more luxury price tag. This camp was just over $200 per night, while others nearby could be found for just over $100.  A more inexpensive option if you so choose would be the Embalaki Authentic Camp in the Serengeti. The rooms here are fine as well, though more bare and simple, they do have running hot water and wifi and a comfortable bed. The staff is very friendly and kind and the dinner area has everything you might need, but the food (in my opinion) was not great. There was not much for dinner or for breakfast that we felt we could eat, and we truly are not picky eaters at all. I did hear a tip from one of the staff members that it is important here to get to the dinner and breakfast buffet services as soon as they open to get the "good" food, but that is sometimes unrealistic with full days of safari planned. The lunch box packed for the day from here, however, did have some good options with a good chicken salad type sandwich and pesto spaghetti noodles. 

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Today, your third day of the safari and second day in Serengeti, is the day to, in the words of our safari guide Lemomo, "get lost". Today you will travel to the eastern side of the Serengeti National Park and get lost in search of more big cats. Here is a video of our Serengeti Day 2 experience. You will first come across a watering hole that has naturally attracted many animals including zebra, impala, and wildebeests. You may even see a lion or two hanging by the watering hole waiting for prey to come close enough to pounce. As you continue on, keep an eye out for leopards, lions, and cheetahs. Leopards and cheetahs can often be found up high in trees or on rock hills far away. Lions are commonly found also near large rock hills or structures in a pride, using shade to keep cool from the sun. After you stop for lunch in an area of the park where you can easily see what's around you (to avoid being attacked by a wild lion of course ...), take some photos and then head back home to Nyumbani and do some more game viewing on the way. Look out for more lions and other big cats, pass by the watering hole again, and then continue back to camp for the evening. As you return back to central Serengeti, keep your eye out for rivers full of hippos - hippos like to stay together, so where you see one, you are likely to see many! Once you are done for the day, head back to Nyumbani for your second night at your home away from home. Make sure to take the short hike to the top of the rock nearby for an unparalleled viewed of the sunset over the park. 

DAY 05
SERENGETI

Crater

On your third day in the Serengeti, wake up early and get on the road before sunrise through the national park on your to to the Ngorogoro Crater for your game drive today. The crater is about ~2 hours from central Serengeti so you will have some game driving this morning as well on you way. The peacefulness and beauty of the Serengeti at sunrise is unbelievable. Here is a video of our Serengeti Day 3 experience. Since it is early in the morning, keep an eye out for hippos out of the water eating grass before the sun comes out, predators dragging their nightly kill back to their den for the family, and hyenas scavenging for leftovers for their morning meal. You may also see more zebras and wildebeests, ostrich grazing in the grass, and some very neat birds flying in the ski. When you get to the Ngorogoro Conservation Area, you will first stop at the entrance to use the washroom and stretch your legs before driving from the rim down into the depths of the crater. Again, the Ngorogoro Crater is famous for having the highest concentration of wild animals in the world in one location, so this is a great place for a game drive on a safari! It is an old volcano and it actually where the first human to ever exist (Lucy) was believed to originate with some very interesting historical significance if you are a history buff. The crater is awesome and it your chance to see all of the "Big 5" - leopard, elephant, rhino, lion, and buffalo - all in the same game drive! You will hopefully see all those animals, along with more zebras, hippos, hyenas, wildebeests, impalas, etc. It will be much busier here just because it is a smaller, more compact space - which might give you a preview of what it could have looked like your entire safari if you were here during the busiest season. It definitely made us appreciate the space we had enjoyed during our game drives earlier in the week. Tonight, you can spend the night in a Ngorogoro camp - I would recommend the Ngorogoro Tortilis Camp with great food, comfortable rooms and awesome staff. Don't forget to stop by the bush TV for a sunset and enjoy the after dinner singalong!

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Now, here is where I would end your safari. I would end this morning with a morning gave drive out of the conservation area and make your way back to Arusha or Kilimanjaro to join a volunteer effort, or fly to your next destination. You can stop and do another day and night of game driving at Tarangire National Park if you would like, but I think the itinerary is perfect with a warm up game drive day at Lake Manyara, 2 full days in the Serengeti, and then a final day in the Ngorogoro. After seeing all the amazing animals over your 4 day safari, you are likely a little tired of long days and driving, and there are no animals at Tarangire that you haven't seen plenty of already. Further, around this time of year, there are lots of biting flies and bugs in this area, so the game driving is not nearly as enjoyable. If you really wanted to stay longer, I would recommend extending your stay in Serengeti one more day before you go to the crater to finish off your adventure. If you would like to extend your stay on a beautiful Tanzanian island, head back to Arusha and hop on a flight to Zanzibar for a few days. You can find a full write up and recommendations on visiting Zanzibar here. ​

WHAT TO PACK

One last piece of advice I have - if you are flying home out of the Kilimanjaro airport (which is the main international airport in the area), do not show up too early. 1 or 1.5 hours before your flight is perfect. They don't even open the gates to allow you to get a mandatory printed boarding pass from the flight agents to be able to go through security until 2 hours before the flight, and the lobby of the airport is very warm and very bare. Also, pro tip: The Twigi Lounge once you are through security is 100% worth it. A perfect, comfortable, air conditioned, stocked with food and wine place for you to relax before your long flight home. 

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BONUS

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Here is a video showing what to pack for a Safari trip, and here is a suggested packing list for a similar itinerary, keeping in mind there is laundry available at many of the lodges and hotels, and packing light is recommended to safe space in the Jeep you will be riding in: 


Miscellaneous
Comfortable travel outfit 
Sunglasses
Medication
Camera
Daypack, for you to carry your personal items
Water Bottle

Sunscreen
Lip Balm with SPF
Insect Repellent, containing DEET
Brimmed Hat, for sun protection
Raincoat
Adapter
Face wipes 
Hike
1x comfortable Hiking Shoes
1x socks- thick, wool or synthetic
1x water-proof Hiking Pants / trouser (convertible to shorts)
1x soft Jacket, fleece or soft-shell
Safari
2x light warm sweaters/jackets/wind breakers
2x long sleeves


4x trousers 
4x T-shirts 
2x lodge / dinner outfits (maxi dresses or a nicer shirt)
4x normal socks

4x underwear
1x simple shoes (sneakers, normal active footwear)


*Avoid blue, black and red colors, shinning / bright colors
*Consider natural colors such as brown, olive, tan, khaki, green 
Beach 
3x conservative bathing suits
3x cover ups
3x conservative summer outfits *cover your shoulders and knees
1x Flip flops or sandals

1x Water shoes


1x Sunhat or baseball cap 

 

Happy safari-ing! 🦒🦓 🦛 🐘 

© 2021 Around the World with Kay

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