5 Days / 4 Nights Lake Manyara, Serengeti & Ngorongoro Crater

Lake Manyara National Park is a sliver of extraordinary wildlife habitat wedged between the walls of the East African Rift Valley and the shore of Lake Manyara's alkaline waters in northern Tanzania. Despite covering only 330 km², the park packs in a remarkable diversity of ecosystems — groundwater forest, open grassland, acacia woodland, hippo pools and the lake itself — and delivers a safari experience of tremendous richness. Your morning game drive begins at 06:00 on the forest circuit immediately inside the park entrance, where a dense groundwater forest fed by springs seeping from the rift wall supports one of East Africa's most impressive olive baboon populations — troops of 200 or more occupy the forest floor in chaotic, fascinating social groups. Sykes' monkeys and black-and-white colobus monkeys swing through the canopy above, while blue monkey troops move in the mid-level vegetation. Lake Manyara is Tanzania's most famous location for tree-climbing lions — a learned behaviour unique to this population, where the lions climb into the large branches of large fig and sausage trees, apparently to escape biting flies and catch the breeze. Your guide will scan the Acacia tortilis canopy methodically with binoculars for the horizontal form of a lion at rest. The groundwater forest also shelters elephant herds of considerable size — families of 30 or 40 elephants moving silently through the cathedral-like forest are a sight that is genuinely breathtaking in its scale and atmosphere. The hippo pools — crystal-clear springs emerging from the rift wall — hold pods of 100 or more hippos, and the hippo pool viewpoint is one of the most productive wildlife stops in northern Tanzania. Return for breakfast by 09:30.

The afternoon drive covers the open grassland and lake shore circuits. Lake Manyara's alkaline waters are one of Tanzania's most important flamingo staging areas — hundreds of thousands of lesser flamingo turn the lakeshore pink in good seasons, and great white pelicans, marabou storks, yellow-billed storks and African spoonbills feed along the shoreline in their thousands. Buffalo herds move across the open floodplain in the afternoon, and giraffe browse the acacia canopy in the golden light. Leopard are present but elusive in the rift wall forests above the park, and spotted hyena emerge from their dens in the late afternoon. The hot springs at Maji Moto, produced by the geothermal activity beneath the Rift Valley floor, are warm enough to bathe in and create a steaming, otherworldly landscape on the lake shore.

The drive out of Lake Manyara in the late afternoon offers beautiful views of the rift escarpment rising 600 metres above the park, with the soda lake glittering below. Continue to your lodge on the crater rim or in the Karatu highlands for dinner and an overnight stay before the next day's destination.