This trip takes you to the park which is easiest to access from Dar es Salaam. A five-hour drive on tarmac takes you straight to the gate of Mikumi National Park where you can see elephants, lions, giraffes, buffaloes, zebras, elands, greater Kudu, wildebeest, roan, hippos and sable antelope. The open plains surrounded by mountains is making a beautiful scenery, and the peak of the day is usually by the hippo pool as the sunset is painting the skies in beautiful colors inspiring both professional and hobby photographers. Second only to Katavi in its untamed wilderness, but far more accessible, Ruaha protects a vast tract of the rugged, semi-arid bush country that characterizes central Tanzania. The Great Ruaha River is its lifeblood, which courses along the eastern boundary in a flooded torrent during the height of the rains, but dwindling thereafter to a scattering of precious pools surrounded by a blinding sweep of sand and rock. Ending your safari with the fresh air from the rain forest in Udzungwa.
Recommendation:
Add one more night if you want to include a last night in Mikumi National park to fly out to Zanzibar in the next afternoon.
Leaving town in the morning we take you for about 5 hours’ drive to Mikumi National Park where you go for a tasteful lunch with a view of the open fields where animals are strolling around throughout the day. After lunch you go for an afternoon game drive and enjoy the wild animals as you are driving around Mikumi, Tanzania’s fourth largest national park, often referred to as little Serengeti as the area of Mkata flood plains which resembles the world-famous savannahs of Serengeti.
Destination: Mikumi National Park
Accommodation: Mikumi Wildlife Camp/Vuma Hills
Full day Game drive in Mikumi National Park. If you wish one of the days, you can go for a hike in Udzungwa National Park. It is about 1,5 – 2 hours’ drive each way, and about 3-6 hours hike in the rain forest, depending on which route you like to go. Alternatively, you spend the full day in Mikumi with the animals.
Destination: Mikumi National Park
Accommodation: Mikumi Wildlife Camp/Vuma Hills
This day you start early in the morning with some fruits, biscuits and some coffee or tea before you head back into the wild before even the birds wake up. This is the best chance to find the nocturnal animals, and some people may be lucky enough to find them “in action” hunting or eating at these hours. Around eight or nine you go back to the lodge for breakfast (if you did not bring it with you). After breakfast, you head to Ruaha National Park. If convenient you may stop in Iringa town for a cultural lunch before heading to Ruaha – one of the most untouched national parks in Tanzania.
Interesting fact: yearly Ruaha has as many visitors as Serengeti National Park have on an average daily basis.
Destination: Ruaha National Park
Accommodation: Ruaha River Lodge/Mdonya Old River/Mwaguzi Tented Camp
These days you enjoy full day game drives. Ruaha’s unusually high diversity of antelope is due to their liking of the acacia savannah of East Africa and the miombo woodland belt. Grant’s gazelle and lesser kudu occur here at the very south of their range, alongside the miombo-associated sable and roan antelope, and one of East Africa’s largest populations of greater kudu, the park emblem, distinguished by the male’s magnificent corkscrew horns.
This is the gems of Ruaha: For predators and large mammals are very easily seen during the dry season (mid May to December) while during the wet season (January to April) the park is best for the bird-watchers, lush scenery and wildflowers. The male greater kudu is most visible in June, the breeding season.
Destination: Ruaha National Park
Accommodation: Ruaha River Lodge/Mdonya Old River/Mwaguzi Tented Camp
This morning you head to Iringa where you do a short stop at Isimila Stone Age. In the landscape of eroded sandstone pillars one of the most significant stone age findings ever identified was unearthed. The stone age tools found there are between 60 to 100.000 years old. Even though the museum is small it is well displayed highlighting some of the most important findings. Continuing from Iringa driving to the green lush scenery at Udzungwa Mountains National Park.
Destination: Udzungwa Mountains National Park
Accommodation: Hondo Hondo
You are starting your day with a solid breakfast before you go for short walk up some of Sanje Waterfalls. You have a packed lunch which you can enjoy on the peak or in the bottom of one of the waterfalls. Please feel free to bring your swimming costume in case you want to take a dip in the fresh and cool mountain water. In the early afternoon, you drive back to Dar es Salaam.
Price per person sharing:
|
1 person |
2 people |
3 people |
4 people |
5 people |
6 people |
|
$4 365 |
$3 365 |
$2 950 |
$2 743 |
$2 638 |
$2 555 |
