16 Days Tanzania Safari And Zanzibar Beach Holiday : Your safari begins with your arrival at Kilimanjaro International Airport (JRO), followed by an unforgettable trip to the great northern circuit national parks, a hot air balloon ride over the endless Serengeti plains, and a stay at a Zanzibar beach where there are endless opportunities to enjoy your life. In accordance with this schedule, your interests, expectations, and our best advice, Focus East Africa Tours will take great care and responsibility for both your ideal safari and your daily activities, ensuring that you have the best safari experiences of a lifetime that you will love forever and that last a lifetime.
This itinerary combines a traditional Tanzanian safari with a beach and cultural vacation on the islands of Zanzibar. The famed Spice Island in the Indian Ocean, with its historic Muslim heritage, is a nice contrast and the perfect place to end the vacation after a dusty and adventurous time in the wilderness and deep environment.
The Arusha National Park, renowned for its variety of birds and monkeys, will be your first destination to explore in this 16 Days Tanzania safari and Zanzibar beach holiday. In quest of enormous elephant herds, you travel to Tarangire National Park’s baobab trees and stop at Lake Manyara National Park to see the tree-climbing lions. You have a decent possibility of seeing the extremely uncommon black rhino in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area’s crater, and you can see huge herds of wildebeest in the fabled Serengeti’s seemingly endless savannah. You will take a flight from Arusha to Unguja, the largest island in the Zanzibar archipelago, at the conclusion of your safari.
TOUR BRIEF ITINERARY: 16-DAYS TANZANIA SAFARI AND ZANZIBAR BEACH HOLIDAY
- Day 1: Arrival At The International Airport Of Kilimanjaro (Jro)
- Day 2: Arusha To Tarangire National Park For Game Drives
- Day 3: Tarangire To Serengeti National Park Via Ngorongoro Area
- Day 4–5: Full-Day Game Drives Around Serengeti National Park
- Day 6: Serengeti To Ngorongoro Crater For Game Drives To Karatu
- Day 7: Fly From Arusha Or Kilimanjaro Airport To Dar Es Salaam
- Day 8: Fly To Kigoma, Transfer To Gombe Stream National Park
- Day 9-11: Discover The Gombe Stream, A Chimpanzee`S Secluded Planet
- Day 12–15: Flight Kigoma To Zanzibar Island Via Dar Es Salaam
- Day 16: Airport Drop-Off For Your Flight Back Home
TOUR DETAILED ITINERARY: 16-DAYS TANZANIA SAFARI AND ZANZIBAR BEACH HOLIDAY
Day 1: Arrival At The International Airport Of Kilimanjaro (Jro)
Your professional driver-guide will meet you at Kilimanjaro Airport (JRO) and extend a warm welcome. After ensuring that all of your belongings are present, he or she will offer you some bottles of mineral water or other cold beverages before making a direct private transfer to your hotel in Arusha for leisure, dinner, and overnight.
Day 2: Arusha-Arusha National Park
You will take your first actual game drive today as part of your 16 days Tanzania Safari and Zanzibar Tour, which begins today. You will begin your journey to Arusha National Park with your guide in a specialist 4×4 safari car after a leisurely breakfast. Tropical birds abound at Arusha Park, which is well renowned for this. In this rather tiny park, there are over 400 distinct species, and as you travel through the tropical jungle, you can readily find them! Numerous times, the park’s lakes are overrun with flamingos, including the rare Greater Flamingo. Beautiful craters, waterfalls, mountains, and green regions can also be found in the park. The Colobus monkey, which is distinguished by its long tail, calls this park home. Colobus is derived from the Greek word colobos, which means stump, and gets its name from its blunt thumb. It is a rare monkey, making it one of the attractions in the park.
On your “full-time” optional walking safari through this woodland park, a ranger will be with you the entire time. The ranger, a National Park Authority employee, has a gun slung over his shoulder in case you run into a buffalo, leopard, or elephant out of the blue. Naturally, the ranger will only fire if there is a genuine threat. You’ll discover that experiencing wildlife up close without the safari vehicle’s protective sheet metal is a very unique feeling. Elephants can be heard trumpeting, you can spot a group of baboons in a clearing, and giraffes can be seen walking by you on stilts.
On the east side of the Meru volcanic massif, you will spend a portion of the journey walking through a thick mountain rainforest. You’ll enjoy a picnic in between. A few kilometers of the mountain must be climbed on foot; the journey takes two to three hours and passes first through a lush meadow and then through sparse acacia woodlands. The mountainous region continues below, traveling through a thick, dark mountain rainforest. The landscape is dominated by mosses, orchids, ferns, and epiphytes. Elephants, buffaloes, bushbucks, and Harvey Duckers all enjoy this area.
The duiker is the smallest species of antelope, standing half a meter at the shoulder. These animals have mahogany-brown coats and relatively short horns. The term “Duiker,” which translates to “diver” in Dutch, refers to the Duiker antelope’s flight behavior, in which, with even the slightest disturbance, the head dives headfirst into the thick foliage. In between, wild flowers are a true feast for the eyes, especially the stunning fireball lilies. After your hike or deer-spotting trip, you’ll head to your lodging for a well-earned meal.
Day 3: Arusha National Park to Tarangire National Park
After breakfast, you go from Arusha and travel 80 kilometers in around 2-3 hours to Tarangire National Park. You will pass bustling Masai settlements and the expansive grasslands that are so emblematic of East Africa along the route. With a total area of 2600 square kilometers, Tarangire National Park is enormous. There are numerous gently undulating plains throughout the area, including two sizable pans in the south that, depending on the time of year, can convert into swamps.
The Tarangire is Tanzania’s fifth-largest park, behind the Serengeti, Nyerere, Ruaha, and Mikumi. The Tarangire River, which originates in the highlands south of the park, inspired the name of the area. This river flows northward almost to the northernmost point of the game reserve, passing through a variety of rocky mountainous terrains that range in height from 1000 to 1675 meters. At this point, it makes a sharp curve to the west and empties into Lake Burungi, which is situated in the park’s northeast and has no outlet. All year long, there is water in the river, which is crucial for the local flora and fauna.
When you arrive at Tarangire Park, your game drive will start via a high grass savannah terrain dominated by the enormous baobab trees (Adansonia digitata), which are widely distributed here. They go by the name of Baobab trees as well. A pleasant spot for a lunch break is a picnic park with a view of the Tarangire River. Elephants, lions, leopards, buffalo, and a variety of antelopes can all be spotted as you travel through the park. If you’re fortunate, you could even get to see an endangered species, like the African wild dog. You’ll drive to your preferred lodging in the late afternoon or evening.
Day 4: Tarangire National Park to Manyara National Park
On the 4th day of your 16 Days Tanzania Safari And Zanzibar Beach Holiday, we travel to Lake Manyara National Park, which is a picturesquely situated tiny strip of shore between the sod-rich Lake Manyara and the western slope of the about 800-meter-high rift valley steep wall. The Rift Valley escarpment, a groundwater forest, an acacia tree savannah, an open grass savannah, the lake shore, various wetlands, and the lake itself make up the park’s diverse landscapes, despite its modest size.
One of the nation’s greenest and rarest game areas is Lake Manyara National Park. The grass savannah is home to wildebeest, zebra, waterbuck, reedbuck, impala, and Thomson’s gazelles, adding to the park’s large animal biomass. The little dikdiks and bushbucks, with their ivory-colored spiral horns, stalk gracefully across the soggy ground in the acacia woods. The large and erratic buffalos can be found in the bushland once more. Dump palms and wild date palms are commonly found in the gallery forest-like flora that lines the waterways. Wild animals can find lots of shade and food under the trees. The lions that climb trees are a well-known landmark of the park; these formidable carnivores like to pose for pictures while perched on acacia trees. With such a wide diversity of species, Lake Manyara will delight ornithologists.
Visit the nearby market village of Mto Wa Mbu if you’d like. This location is a mingling pot of regional cultures and a haven for those looking for souvenirs, thanks to its agricultural and fresh products. The region’s scenery is lush, resembling an oasis. The two rivers, Kirurumu and Simba, which originate in the Ngorongoro Highlands and flow into this rift valley region at Mto wa Mbu via porous lava rock layers below, are responsible for the change in vegetation.
This area gets transformed into one that is especially fertile. Here, a lot of vegetables and fruit are grown on a large cultivated area. This market town is bustling with activity and has a colorful way of life. There are also a lot of “Dukas” here. These stores sell anything from ebony carvings to vibrant clothing. The red bananas are a specialty that shouldn’t be missed. When you take a glance at the fruit stalls, you will undoubtedly notice them right away. They taste fruitier and are both shorter and thicker than regular bananas. Following the excitement and the numerous sensations of the day, you will have a well-earned dinner in your lodging.
Day 5: Manyara National Park to Ngorongoro Conservation Area
You will travel to the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, also referred to as the eighth wonder of the world, after a morning refreshment. The paved road ascends steadily until it reaches the rim of the Ngorongoro crater. On the outer slopes of the crater, the road ascends sharply in serpentines through a markedly cold, fairytale alpine forest. You will arrive at the Loduare Park gate, the entry to the conservation area, after traveling a few kilometers. The journey continues uphill through denser and denser rainforest with bearded lichens and ferns after the entry formalities are finished. The world-famous Ngorongoro Crater is not far away, so the strain increases.
The first perspective and highest point, at a height of 2286 meters, are reached after a brief ride. About 650 meters of elevation separate the crater’s edge from its floor. You may view savannah regions, marshes, rivers, forests, little hills, and the soda lake, which is known as Lake Magadi here, if you gaze down. You may view herds of buffalo, wildebeest, zebra, and gazelles moving across the crater floor with the use of binoculars. Following that, you will enter the crater and begin an amazing game drive at the bottom of the crater.
Over 120 different kinds of mammals live in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, including the fabled Big Five. Around 20,000 large mammals live in the crater area, including buffalo, zebra, antelope, and elephant. There are more than 400 spotted hyenas and over 100 lions. One of the few areas in the world where one may observe the black rhino, it is one of the most well-liked safari attractions.
In the strictest sense, the Ngorongoro Crater is not a crater. It is a caldera from a geomorphological perspective, which means that during its most recent eruption, the crater cone collapsed in the middle as the lava flowed out and created this enormous crater bowl. It ranks as the sixth-largest caldera on the planet’s surface. Your guide will transport you back to your lodging in the late afternoon or early evening.
Day 6: Ngorongoro Conservation Area to Serengeti National Park
The centerpiece of your trip, a safari in Serengeti National Park, is scheduled for today. This well-known national park has served as the backdrop for many of the most well-known wildlife documentaries and movies. The term Serengeti literally translates as “endless plains” in Maasai. These enormous plains are home to numerous predators, including more than 4,000 lions, 225 cheetahs, tens of thousands of leopards, 3500 hyenas, and hundreds of wild dogs.
After breakfast, keep traveling the western crater road until you reach a track that descends steeply and enters the Serengeti. The “Malanja Depression” is to your left, where the Maasai lead and graze enormous herds of cattle for drinking. The 3107-meter-tall Lemagrut extinct volcanic mountain is visible behind it. There is a sharp cliff on the left side after another 20 kilometers. The mountain here has let off some enormous rocks. You have now arrived at the plateau, the Serengeti’s nirvana. There aren’t many trees, and the area is flat; it resembles a sea of grass as far as the eye can see.
Depending on your preferences, you will drive to your preferred lodging in the South Serengeti for a little break. You and your guide will go on a game drive in the afternoon. The rest of the day can be spent relaxing and being pampered by your cook or the lodge staff.
Day 7:Full day Serengeti National Park
You rise early today to go on a morning wildlife drive as part of your Serengeti Safari. You will have the best chance to watch predators in action as the sun starts to light up the savannah since they will be taking advantage of the low light and cooler temperatures to look for an early meal. The movements of wildebeest, zebra, and other herbivores are best observed at this time, as are those of lions, leopards, and cheetahs. As an alternative, you can reserve a champagne breakfast and a sunrise hot air balloon expedition.
After an extraordinary morning, return to your lodge for a late breakfast and some refreshments before continuing your journey with a picnic. In consideration of the time of year and the kinds of animals you hope to view, your driver will select the optimal route. In this manner, you may maximize the pleasure of your day spent exploring the Serengeti’s abundant animals. You will get the chance to watch the massive animal migration, depending on the season. In the evening, after an eventful day exploring the expansive Serengeti grasslands, you will return to your lodging.
Day 8: Drive Back to Arusha
On the 8th day of your 16 Days Tanzania Safari And Zanzibar Beach Holiday, You depart the Serengeti for the Ngorongoro Conservation Area after breakfast. The drive takes you back through the Serengeti on a lovely route and gives you the chance to see some animals you might have missed earlier, including herds of wildebeests and zebras, huge and graceful giraffes, leaping antelopes and gazelles, the powerful African elephant, and graceful predators. You spend roughly two to three hours driving back to Arusha after leaving the reserve’s gates behind you. You will have the chance to stop at one of the many “dukas” (little shops) en route home and purchase some trinkets for your loved ones.
Day 9: Fly From Arusha to Zanzibar (Unguja)
You will now begin your transfer to the semi-autonomous region of the Republic of Zanzibar after finishing the mainland portion of your 16-day Tanzania Safari and Zanzibar Tour (no additional visa is needed). You will be picked up by our driver and driven to Arusha (or Kilimanjaro International) airport after breakfast. You will arrive at Zanzibar’s (Unguja) Abeid Amani Karume International Airport after a 60- to 90-minute trip. The driver will pick you up once more in the arrivals area. You will now be driven to the island’s true capital, which has a lengthy history. You will soon arrive at your upscale hotel in the historic Arabic city center known as Stone Town. The Forodhani Garden and the harbor are close by. The sun sets into the Indian Ocean on this side of the island.
Day 10: Tour to Zanzibar’s Stone Town
After breakfast, at the time of your choosing, your guide will pick you up from your hotel to begin your tour of Zanzibar’s Stone Town. The capital of the semi-autonomous Zanzibar archipelago includes Stone Town. It is both the historical center of Zanzibar City’s west shore and the main island of Unguja. The numerous enormous multi-story stone structures that make up the landscape of the historic section of the city are where the city’s name originated. These structures are actually composed of coral and mortar rather than stone. Corals were a useful and accessible building material; however, they are easily broken.
The tour guide will discuss the island’s history with slavery and take you to the location of the unfortunates’ auction. The National Museum of Zanzibar, commonly known as the Peace Memorial Museum, is the next stop. The museum features a sizable collection of the island’s natural history and artifacts. After that, proceed to the Forodhani Gardens to witness the historic British Consulate, where explorers like Dr. Livingston and Stanley lodged before embarking on their fabled safaris. Then see the nearby Old Fort and the House of Wonders, Zanzibar’s tallest structure, both constructed by the Sultan for ceremonial and administrative purposes. We visit the historic homes, most of which are older than 150 years, during a relaxing stroll through the winding streets. We’ll pay a visit to Dr. Livingston House to round up our journey. You will return to your lodging in Zanzibar City in the evening.
Day 11: Zanzibar Spice Tour
On the 11th day of your 16 Days Tanzania Safari And Zanzibar Beach Holiday, Your guide will pick you up from your lodging and take you on a trip around the island’s interior. You will first go by Dr. Livingstone’s home. From there, the well-known African explorer began planning his final journey to Central Africa in 1866. The ruins of Sultan Baghash’s Maruhubi Palace are the first stop on your journey; they are located about 3 km outside the city. He had built this palace to house his harem, which consisted of roughly 100 ladies and their eunuchs (servants and guards).
The driver, who doubles as the tour guide, will introduce you to local farmers, who will show you around their orchards and spice gardens in a warm and inviting manner. Now we move on to the actual spice tour. You can sample the foods on exhibit, savor different spices, and consume freshly selected fruit like lychee, hairy rambutans, mangosteens (which have a strawberry flavor), dorians, and the enormous jackfruit, which emerges from the jackfruit tree’s trunk. An immature coconut, known as a “Dafu” here, is presented to you by a teen who deftly scales a coconut palm. A quick bushwhack removes the top portion of the nut, allowing you to use the coconut as a spherical drinking vessel and enjoy a cold, nutrient-rich beverage. After many more interactions with various spices, in the late afternoon, your guide will take you to the beach hotel of your choice.
Day 12: Zanzibar Jozani Forest Excursion
Your guide will take you to Jozani Forest after breakfast. It appears that a vast groundwater forest formerly covered the entire island of Zanzibar; today, this area is a protected forest and the last remaining jungle in Zanzibar. Even though the forest only covers 10 square kilometers today, it is home to a wide variety of animals and plants since it contains a variety of ecosystems, such as swamp forest, evergreen thickets, mangroves, salt-tolerant grassland, etc.
The three places you will see today make up the majority of the Jozani Forest: a mangrove forest, a mahogany ground water forest, and a forest where the well-known red colobus monkeys, a Guereza species that is unique to Zanzibar, live. When you arrive by automobile at the Jozani Reserve, you will first tour the first section of the park, which is often where the Colobus monkeys are. Go to the mangrove wetland after the Colobus woodland area. A salty river that originates from the sea about three kilometers away winds its way through this swampy terrain. A portion of this mangrove forest can now be explored thanks to the government’s construction of a wooden footbridge. Tens of thousands of tiny fiddler crabs, which have carved dwelling tunnels into the marshy ground, may be seen from this footbridge. In case of danger, they hide in the shadow of the mangrove trees. You return to your beach hotel after exploring the reserve’s beautiful mahogany woodland, which is its final section.
Day 13: Zanzibar Beach Hotel
Rest and relaxation by the sea, a day at leisure in your preferred accommodation
Day 14: Zanzibar Beach Hotel
Rest and relaxation by the sea, a day at leisure in your preferred accommodation
Day 15: Zanzibar Beach Hotel
Rest and relaxation by the sea, a day at leisure in your preferred accommodation
Day 16: Airport Drop Off For Your Flight Back Home
Depending on the time of your flight, you will be taken to the airport today at your leisure. It’s time to catch a flight home after thousands of kilometers of wonderful experiences in the wild and amazing adventures in Zanzibar. A representative from our business will pick you up at the hotel and drive you to the airport in preparation for your return trip. And with that, the 16-day Tanzania Holidays Safari will come to a conclusion.
TOUR PRICE PACKAGE INCLUDES:
- Airport pickup and drop-off
- Transportation in a 4×4 safari vehicle during a safari
- Professional, English-speaking guide
- Overnight accommodation according to the itinerary
- Meals while on safari
- All government taxes
- All mentioned activities
- All national park fees
- Zanzibar Flight from the Serengeti
TOUR PRICE PACKAGE EXCLUDES:
- International Flights
- Optional activities
- Alcoholic and soft drinks
- Visa fees
- Tips
- Personal spending money for souvenirs, etc.
- Travel insurance
Kindly get in touch with us to know the price for this tour and to make a booking. Either a private expedition or joining a group are options for this 16 days Tanzania Safari and Zanzibar holiday Tour. If you want to be a part of a group, send us your inquiry, and we’ll help you join a group. The same goes for those interested in a private tour!
