Tanzania Leopard Safari

Visit all of northern Tanzania’s great wildlife parks and savor the beauty of your surroundings from beautifully-designed lodges in prime locations. Begin with a restful stay at Arusha. Then you’re off on safari, game viewing among the picturesque Lake Manyara. Lake Manyara is a jewel box of diversity with forests, grassland, marshes, scrubland and open plains, each a thriving habitat for different types of animals. Experience nature up close on a full day of impressive wildlife

DAY 1: JRO / Arusha / Ngorongoro Crater

On your arrival at JRO, you met Kilimanjaro Excursion representative and proceed towards Ngorongoro Crater. The Great Rift escarpment closes in as the road ascends the slopes of Mt. Ngorongoro, then passes along the crater rim to your luxury lodge perched 2000 feet over the crater floor. Savor your stay at one of the best locations in Africa, with its rich artistic décor, superb views, and flowing split-level dining centered around a cozy hearth.
Overnight:  Ngorongoro Serena or Sopa Lodge  (D)

DAY 2:  Ngorongoro Crater

Set out early with a picnic lunch for your safari on the crater floor, a beautiful ecosystem with some 25,000 resident mammals including buffalo, zebra, wildebeest, hippo and massive tusker elephants.  This is one of the best places in Africa to encounter rhinoceros, and even small animals like the caracal are easy to see in the flat, open terrain.  Leopard are most often encountered in the Lerai Forest, but watch for them also along the forested slopes as you travel to and from the crater floor.  Pink flamingos breed at crater lakes whose permanent waters support nearly every other type of animal found in East Africa except giraffes, due to the absence of acacias and their other favorite tree-level foods.
Overnight:  Ngorongoro Serena or Sopa Lodge  (BLD)

DAY 3 Ngorongoro / Olduvai / Serengeti

After breakfast, begin a day of game viewing en route to your luxury lodge in the heart of Serengeti National Park.  Detour at Olduvai Gorge to learn about the Leakey family’s findings of early hominid fossils, tools and footprints that established Africa as the likely birthplace of mankind.  Continue into the Serengeti for more of the best game viewing in Africa. Watch for lion seeking shade at rock kopjes, and antelope feeding on long-grass plains.  Search for the twitch of a tale hanging from a fever or sausage tree along the Seronera River, where leopard rest and stash their prey.  Continue to your classic lodge in the Seronera Valley, where chances of seeing and photographing unbaited leopard are perhaps better than anywhere else in Africa.
Overnight:  Serengeti Serena or Sopa Lodge (BLD)

DAY 4:  Serengeti National Park

On your full day Serengeti safari, experienced Africa in its raw and untamed wildness.  Arise early to get out among the wildlife at their most active time of day.  Chances are excellent of seeing lion, leopard and cheetah, plus the rest of the big five and a great variety of other species.  From December to June, migrating herds of wildebeest and zebra add well over a million animals to the park’s wildlife population.  But at all times of year the vast plains, rocky kopjes, riverine forests and permanent hippo springs abound with all manner of large animals some 3 million strong.
Overnight:  Serengeti Serena or Sopa Lodge (BLD)

DAY 5:  Serengeti / Lake Manyara

Begin the day with one more brilliant Serengeti sunrise game-drive, or an optional hot air balloon ride followed by a champagne brunch.  Then depart overland to your hotel on the edge of the Great Rift escarpment, with spectacular views of Lake Manyara shining like a mirage in the afternoon heat.  Take the pleasure of an afternoon drive through the wealth of habitats in the small Lake Manyara Park.  Look for the famous tree-climbing lions in the acacia woodlands, elusive leopards and monkeys in the groundwater forest, bird life along the lake, and elephant by the Ndala River.
Overnight:  Lake Manyara Serena Lodge (BLD)

DAY 6:  Lake Manyara / Arusha / Depart

Your Tanzania Leopard Safari draws to a close as you make your way back to Arusha, where lunch is included at a typical local restaurant.

encounters in the Ngorongoro Crater. Cap your safari with a thrilling three nights stay in the heart of the action of the world-famous Serengeti Plain.