Arusha: 5-Day Safari & Ngorongoro Crater with Lodge

★★★★★★★★★★ 4.73 (15 reviews)

Free cancellationExcellent quality

1/11

Duration5d

GroupPrivate

LanguagesEN · DE +3

PickupAt your hotel

Five Days in Tanzania's Three Best Parks, Sleeping at the Crater's Edge

You spend five days moving through three parks — Tarangire, Ngorongoro Crater, Lake Manyara — with private transport and your own driver. Two nights you sleep at lodges overlooking the parks themselves, cutting out the long morning drives other tours need. You see the Big 5, tree-climbing lions, and the crater's 610-metre descent. All transport, game drives, park fees and accommodation are included; you arrive at the airport and a driver meets you there.

Step-by-step itinerary

Day 1 — Arrival and leisure time

Arrive at Kilimanjaro Airport
Meet Benson Safaris driver
Drive to hotel
Rest or explore town

Day 2 — Tarangire National Park safari

Breakfast at hotel
Drive to Tarangire National Park
Full-day game drive in park
See elephants and wildlife
Overnight at Manyara Serena Lodge

Day 3 — Ngorongoro Crater game drive

Breakfast at lodge
Drive to Ngorongoro Crater rim
Descend into crater
Full-day game drive in crater
Spot rhinos, lions, elephants
Overnight at Ngorongoro Serena Lodge

Day 4 — Lake Manyara National Park safari

Breakfast at lodge
Drive to Lake Manyara National Park
Full-day game drive in park
See tree-climbing lions and wildlife
Return to Usa River town
Overnight at River Trees Country Inn

Day 5 — Departure and transfer

Breakfast at hotel
Transfer to airport
Depart Tanzania

The Experience

Most safari trips cram you into a van with eight strangers and move you to a new lodge each night. This one keeps you in two lodges that actually sit where the animals are — one overlooking Lake Manyara, the other perched on the Ngorongoro Crater rim — so you're not driving an hour before breakfast just to see something worth seeing. You arrive at Kilimanjaro International Airport and a driver meets you there, takes you to River Trees hotel in Arusha to rest, then the five-day safari starts the next morning with a full day in Tarangire National Park.

Tarangire is the part most people skip, which is exactly why it matters. The Tarangire River runs through it and during the dry season it's the only water for miles, so elephants and zebra and wildebeest bunch up along the banks in numbers that feel almost unreal. The landscape is dotted with ancient baobab trees — the Maasai believe they were the first trees ever made — and the earth turns a deep rust color under the sun. You'll see lion, cheetah, leopard, giraffe, buffalo, and if you're patient, the smaller things: dwarf mongoose, impala, fringe-eared oryx. The park doesn't have the crowds of the Crater, and that's the whole point. You overnight at Manyara Serena Safari Lodge.

Day three is the Ngorongoro Crater, and it's the reason people come to Tanzania. You descend 610 metres from the rim into a crater so intact and so full of life that UNESCO made it a World Heritage site in 1979. The crater floor has permanent water, so the animals never leave — wildebeest, buffalo, zebra, eland, gazelle, elephants with tusks that catch the light. The Crater holds the largest lion population anywhere on earth, plus leopards, cheetahs, spotted hyenas, and over 500 bird species including white pelicans and flamingos. You can spend a full day here and still not see everything. The lodge sits on the rim, so you watch the light change across the crater floor from your room.

Lake Manyara on day four is smaller and stranger — Ernest Hemingway called it "the loveliest I had seen in Africa" and you'll understand why the moment you see the escarpment rise behind it. The lake itself is soda, alkaline, and ringed with fig trees and acacia woodland. The animals here are different: huge buffalo herds, giraffes, mongoose, dik dik. And then there are the tree-climbing lions, which sounds like a myth until you see one draped across a branch ten metres up, cooling off in the afternoon. You return to Usa River town that evening and stay at River Trees Country Inn. The next morning, a driver takes you back to the airport.

The whole trip is private transportation — your own vehicle, your own driver, no shared vans — and it includes all game drives, park fees, accommodation, and meals. You're not arranging transport between parks or negotiating with guides at the gate. The lodges are mid-range, comfortable, with views that matter. If you want to meet Maasai people and learn about their culture, that can be arranged as an add-on, but it's not forced into the itinerary.

What’s included

Your five days include private vehicle transportation throughout, all game drives in Tarangire National Park, Ngorongoro Crater, and Lake Manyara, park entry fees, accommodation at River Trees hotel in Arusha (first night), Manyara Serena Safari Lodge (second night), Ngorongoro Serena Safari Lodge (third night), and River Trees Country Inn in Usa River (fourth night), plus meals at the lodges.
Airport transfers on arrival and departure are included.
You do not arrange your own transport between parks or negotiate park fees at the gate.

Good to know

Easy physical levelPublic transport nearby

Operated by Benson Safaris Tanzania

Is this one for you?Book this if you want to see the Big 5 and the Ngorongoro Crater without spending half your days in a van with other tourists — the private transport and lodge locations mean you start game drives where the animals actually are, not an hour away from them.