Affordable Lodge Safari - 6 days

Are you looking for an affordable safari but you aren’t the type for group tours? Visit three spectacular wildlife parks, explore jungles, craters, and vast plains, encounter rhino, elephant, lion and cheetah, while staying in wonderful lodges, sleeping in comfortable beds,  and enjoying sumptuous food.  You’ll explore small but wonderful Lake Manyara National Park and then descend into Ngorongoro Crater, an enormous caldera with 2000 ft walls, home to 30,000 animals. Then, end your safari in Serengeti National Park, world famous for its abundance of wildlife and the site of the Great Migration. If you are watching your wallet but want comfort, good food, and incredible wildlife encounters, this is the perfect trip for you.

Day 1

Arrival in Arusha / Kilimanjaro Airport - Arusha
After your arrival at Kilimanjaro Airport you will be met and transferred to your hotel in Arusha.
Overnight: Impala Hotel

Day 2   

Arusha- Lake Manyara
Sleep late, get over jet lag, have breakfast at your hotel. Have lunch in Arusha then drive to Lake Manyara. 
Meals Included: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner
Overnight: Kirurumu Tented Lodge

Day 3 

Lake Manyara - Serengeti
Enjoy a morning game drive in Lake Manyara National Park whose inhabitants include hippos, monkeys, tree climbing lions, flamingoes and other varieties of birdlife.  Lunch at the lodge. Then, drive to Serengeti National Park.
Meals Included: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner
Overnight: Serengeti Sopa

LAKE MANYARA NATIONAL PARK
Located on the foot of the wall of the Great Rift Valley, Lake Manyara National Park is one of the oldest and most popular sanctuaries in East Africa. The park has a large variety of habitats, making it possible to support a wealth of wildlife in its small area. The main habitats include the shallow soda lake itself which occupies 77% of the park, the ground water forest, open grassland, acacia woodland and the rift wall.   The park’s residents include buffalo, elephants, leopards, baboons, impala, giraffes, zebra, wildebeest, ostrich and hippos.  Popularly referred to as an ornithologist's paradise, Lake Manyara contains over 400 bird species, including pelicans, spoonbills, Egyptian geese and the migratory flamingoes, which arrive in hundreds of thousands creating one of Africa's great natural sights over the soda lake.

SERENGETI NATIONAL PARK
A World Heritage Site, and recently proclaimed a World Wide Wonder, Serengeti National Park is one of the most famous wildlife sanctuaries in the world.  The park is vast, covering 6000 square miles, and is aptly named “endless plains” by the Maasai people.  You immediately experience its enormity as you enter the southeastern plains of the park from Ngorongoro.The principal features of the Serengeti are the short and long grass plains in the south and east, the acacia Savannah in the central areas, the hilly and densely wooded areas in the north and the extensive woodland in the west. There is a wide variety of scenery, which includes the plains, lakes, hills and  rocky outcrops called kopjes. The main game drive areas in the Serengeti are the Seronera Valley, the Western Corridor, and northern Serengeti. The Seronera valley in central Serengeti, endowed with permanent surface water, attracts a large concentration of wildlife throughout the year.  Common animals that can be seen here are lions, buffaloes, impalas, hippos, waterbucks, elephants, cheetahs, the leopard, and over 400 species of birds.  The park provides sanctuary to the highest concentration of plains animals in the world, and is the site of the Great Migration.
 

Day 4  

Serengeti
Enjoy morning and afternoon game drives in the endless plains of the Serengeti for a chance to see the great herds of wildebeest, zebras and gazelles or a pride of lions lounging in the shade.
Meals Included: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner
Overnight: Serengeti Sopa

Day 5  

Serengeti - Oldapai- Ngorongoro
Depart for a morning game drive in Serengeti National Park. Lunch at the lodge. After lunch, drive to Olduvai Gorge, the site of Louis and Mary Leakey’s renowned archaeological discoveries. Their findings include some of man’s earliest known ancestral remains. Continue driving to Ngorongoro Conservation Area.
Meals Included: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner
Overnight: Ngorongoro Sopa

NGORONGORO CRATER
Ngorongoro, a deep crater created by the collapsed cone of a volcano, contains a hidden world of wildlife.  It is a true Garden of Eden. A beautiful highland forest covers the 2,000-foot-deep sheer sides of the caldera, a spectacular barrier encircling and protecting the plains wildlife living on the crater floor.  Although the floor is only 100 square miles, it is home to around 30,000 animals -zebra, wildebeest, gazelle, buffalo, eland, hartebeest, wart hog, and elephant, to name just a few, along with a high concentration of predators, including leopard and some of the finest black-maned lions in Africa.  Thousands of flamingos flutter and shimmer like a pink heat haze on the soda lake in the middle of the crater.  You may spot the rare and elusive black rhinoceros, one of Africa’s most endangered species, who is also a resident here. Take great photographs of the wildlife against the spectacular backdrop of the crater’s forest covered walls.

A UNESCO protected World Heritage Site and an International Biosphere Reserve, the Ngorongoro Conservation Area is a pioneering experiment in multi-purpose land use where people (the Maasai), their livestock and wildlife coexist and share the same protected habitat. The craters of Ngorongoro and Empakai are reserved exclusively for wildlife, while the rest of the Conservation Area is shared by wildlife, people and livestock. The Maasai, the main residents of Ngorongoro, are pastoralists who move widely with their herds of cattle, sheep, goat and donkeys in search of pasture and water. In recent years the Maasai have been encouraged to work on the land and supplement their traditional diet of milk and meat.

Day 6

Ngorongoro Crater
Today you will descend 2000 feet to the floor of the crater for a day of game drives with picnic lunches. Explore the forest areas that are inhabited by monkeys and elephants, the lake area, where you may see flamingoes, and the open savannah where lions hunt for food.
Meals Included: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner
Overnight: Ngorongoro Sopa

Day 7  

Ngorongoro –Arusha - Kilimanjaro Airport
After breakfast, drive back to Arusha.  Lunch in Arusha. Transfer to Kilimanjaro Airport for your flight home.