Generation Exploration
Family Safari to
Tanzania
Experience the ultimate in “cool” as you travel back to the dawn of time with your family. Visit traditional villages where life has changed little. This is a vacation the entire family will talk about for years to come – from that first elephant slowly lumbering like a dinosaur past your Land Cruiser to camping out in tents with bed and private bathrooms, to learning the Hadzabe's click language and dancing with the Maasai. The amazing wildlife viewing you see as you cross Tanzania’s varied terrain by Land Cruiser and on foot, is only enhanced by a visit to Olduvai Gorge, rich in some of the oldest fossils of man and wildlife.
Days 1/2 - New York/Arusha
Board your KLM/Northwest Airlines flight in New York. The next morning connect in Amsterdam with your flight to Tanzania. Upon arrival in Arusha in the evening you are escorted to your beautifully-landscaped lodge. SERENA MOUNTAIN VILLAGE. (Meals Aloft)
Day 3 - Lake Manyara National Park
Visit Mto Wa Mbu, a modern village made up of people from several tribal areas and lunch on traditional Tanzanian dishes served under banana trees. Also visit a school where you can donate books and school supplies to the children. Continue to Lake Manyara National Park, home to buffalo, wildebeest, impala, giraffe, zebra, and the elusive tree-climbing lions. A birder’s paradise with over 350 species of birds, you may see Verreaux's Eagle, a variety of vultures, storks, swifts and swallows winging their way atop the spectacular cliffs overlooking the lake which often has a pinkish view with its flamingos, pelicans and storks shimmering in the distance. Enjoy a refreshing swim in the pool that seems to meld with the horizon overlooking the Great Rift Valley. LAKE MANYARA SERENA LODGE. (B,L,D)
Days 4/5 - Lake Manyara National Park/Lake Eyasi
Explore Lake Manyara National Park with its dense groundwater forest of magnificent giant fig and mahogany trees where blue and vervet monkeys swing and chatter overhead and an abundance of baboons, bushbuck, waterbuck, and elephant barely give you a glance. Continue to Lake Eyasi to meet some of the last remaining hunter-gatherers in the world – the Mangati and the Hadzape, traditional bushmen. They will welcome you into their simple bush homes where the tree canopy or a cave provides them with shelter. Roots provide a wide range of medicines and the mighty baobab fruit as a source of drink. Accompany hunters while they hunt bush meat, learn to make jewelry with the women, watch the production of traditional weapons and instruments, and learn the Hadzabe's click language. Walk with guides to the shores of Lake Eyasi to learn about the history of the area. Experience the excitement of evenings spent under canvas at your private camp. The walk-in tents have two canvas cot beds and a small verandah with table, mirror and canvas washstand. There is an adjacent private toilet and a shared bucket shower. Your crew is on hand to prepare and serve meals under a canopy of stars or in a dining tent with canvas sides. PRIVATE MOBILE CAMP. (All Meals Daily)
Days 6/7 - Gibb’s Farm/Ngorongoro Conservation Area
Enjoy a scenic walk around Lake Eyasi. After lunch at Gibb's Farm, visit a traditional Iraqw village. Residents of the immediate Ngorongoro highlands near Gibb's Farm for over 200 years, you can try your hand at grinding maize using grinding stones and see how a traditional Iraqw skirt is made. Continue to the Ngorongoro Crater, a World Heritage site. After dinner you will be entertained by a Maasai song and dance performance. Your lodge is built into the rim of the crater. Each room has private terraces so your first and last glimpse of the day will be the magical crater below. The mist that often obscures the crater floor of this extinct volcano from the surface only adds to the sense of wonder as you descend 2,000 feet into the crater the next morning. Discover elephant lumbering through the primeval forest, lion resting in the tall grass, black rhino grazing and the distinctive grunt of the hippo as you lunch overlooking the hippo pool. NGORONGORO SERENA SAFARI LODGE. (B,L,D Daily)
Days 8/9/10 - Olduvai Gorge/Serengeti National Park
Visit a nearby Maasai Village where you will experience this nomadic tribe’s way of life and colorful culture before driving to Olduvai Gorge, one of the world’s most important paleoanthropological sites. It is here in 1959, where Mary and Louis Leakey found 1.7-million-year-old Zinjanthropus and Homo Habilis (Handyman). In the adjacent museum, see many of the stone tools found at Olduvai, as well as prehistoric elephant, giant horned sheep and enormous ostrich fossils. Continue to Serengeti National Park, what the Maasai refer to as Siringitu – “the place where the land moves on forever." Here life’s possibilities seem as infinite as the endless variety of wildlife you will see such as lion, leopard, and cheetah, and their prey – giraffe, topi, buffalo and impala. The kopjes (prehistoric rock outcroppings) host hyraxes, dwarf mongooses, and often a sleepy black-maned lion or leopard. The open grassland is home to large groups of Thomson's and Grant's gazelles, spotted hyena and jackal. Each year, more than two million wildebeest, accompanied by thousands of zebras and other herbivores, cross the Serengeti in search of fertile grasslands. Visit the Serengeti Research Station and walk the Serengeti Nature Trail onto a granite kopje to learn first-hand about the Serengeti habitat and research projects. Your simple, but stunning lodge is inspired by a traditional African village. Separate rondavel "huts" house the luxury guest rooms with beautiful views of the Serengeti plains below. SERENGETI SERENA SAFARI LODGE. (B,L,D Daily)
Days 11/12 - Arusha/Amsterdam/New York
Transfer to the airstrip this morning for your flight back to Arusha. Shop or relax in your dayroom at SERENA MOUNTAIN VILLAGE. After dinner, transfer to the airport for your flights home. (B,L,D;Meals Aloft)
Optional Extension to Kenya
Extend your safari adventure to Tanzania's famous northern neighbor – Kenya. The original safari destination, you can't help but feel the excitement of following in some of its legendary visitors' footstep – Karen Blixen, Ernest Hemingway, Theodore Roosevelt – to some of it's legendary regions. Experience more exciting wildlife viewing at Lakes Naivasha and Nakuru and across the endless plains of the legendary Maasai Mara. The extension features membership in the Young Adventurers’ and Young Rangers’ Club combining the exhilaration of a “bush school” education with practical conservation work, and cultural and sporting exchanges with the local Maasai community.
Your Safari Includes:
- Roundtrip air transportation between New York and Arusha. Superior accommodations as indicated.
- All meals as indicated.
- All wildlife viewing by either safari minibus or Land Cruiser with photographic roof hatch, driven by a naturalist guide. A window seat is guaranteed.
- Visits to villages, schools, and the various ethnic groups that make up Tanzania and Kenya.
- Children activities throughout itinerary.
- Lectures and visits with researchers while at Serengeti.
- Visit with Mary Wykstra from the Cheetah Conservation Fund while on Kenya extension.
- Complimentary bottled water in vehicles. One pair of complimentary field glasses per vehicle, but we suggest you bring your own.
- Professional naturalist will accompany the group with 10 travelers.
- All applicable hotel and lodge taxes and gratuities.
- All game park entry fees.
- Complimentary backpack, baggage tags and passport wallet.