Day 1: Arrival/Dar es Salaam
Picked up at Dar es Salaam International airport and transferred to Medditeraneo Hotel for overnight on a bed and breakfast basis. This hotel is set around beautiful landscaped African gardens, bursting with tropical flowers and shaded by palm trees, the cool interiors of our rustic cottage-style rooms offer welcome relief from the Tanzania sun, while the restaurant dishes up gorgeous Mediterranean cuisine.
Day 2: Selous game reserve
After breakfast drive to Selous Game Reserve with packed lunch en route. In the late evening you will drive to Selous Kinga Lodge for dinner and overnight. With an area of around 50,000sq km,(5% of Tanzania’s land surface) Selous game reserve is one of the large protected areas in the world. Its size is stunning, bigger than Switzerland or Denmark, uninhabited and little touched by human interference. Visitors, therefore, find themselves in a pristine wilderness far away from the trodden tourist routes. Its wildlife (including some few remaining Black rhinos and Wild dogs) are very spectacular.
Day 3: Selous game reserve
Today you will have a full day of game drive in Selous Game Reserve with picnic lunch. In the late afternoon, you will return to Selous Kinga Lodge for dinner and overnight.
Day 4: Selous game reserve
After breakfast depart from the northern circuit to the southern part of the reserve doing a full day of game drive. In the late afternoon, you will continue to Sable Moutain Lodge for dinner and overnight.
Day 5: Mikumi national park
After early breakfast depart with picnic lunch and drive to Mikumi National Park across the beautiful Uluguru mountains, enjoying people and culture. Dinner and overnight will be at Mikumi Safari Lodge. With an area of about 3230km (Tanzania’s 4th largest Park); Mikumi is one of the most popular parks for both tourists and local people.
The park is framed the Uluguru mountains to the northeast and the Udzungwa Mountains to the southwest and the Selous Game reserve to the South; the park itself consists mainly of Miombo woodland and although the scenery gets a little tedious after a while, the sighting of plain games like Impala, Buffalo, Zebra, Giraffe, wildebeest, Elephants, Hippo, and Crocodiles are common enough. One of the most principal features of Mikumi park is the Mkata River flood plain,(an area of lush vegetation which particularly attracts a lot of wildlife.)
The absence of Gazelles in this Park is curious – it seems their ecological niche is occupied by Impala. Mikumi and Selous game reserves are lying on the same ecosystem, which covers a large part of central & Southern Tanzania. (This ecosystem stretches to within 150 km of the Mozambique border, whose Niasa Game Reserve was formerly part of it). Predators which can be seen in Mikumi, include Lion, Leopards (more difficult to see), black-backed Jackal (can sometimes be seen in the evening), and the African Civet is the nocturnal visitor in most of the Camps. Mikumi’s birdlife is profuse, with over 400 species recorded to date, many of them Eurasian migrants, present between October and April.
Day 6: Udzungwa mountains national park
After breakfast you will have morning game drive to Mikumi park with packed lunch then drive to Udzungwa for dinner and overnight at Hondo Hondo Tented Camp. The Udzungwa Mountains are almost unearthly. An enchanted forest of leafy glades, flecked with sunshine where fungus, lichens, moss, and ferns ingratiate themselves into every damp crevice, it is at once both vivid detail and larger than life. A new variety of African violet was discovered in the shelter of a 30m high tree.
It is a hothouse nurturing species found nowhere else on earth, a secret bank account of precious genetic stock. Of it six types of primate, two are endemic the Iringa red colobus monkey and the sanje crested Mangabey, not discovered until 1979. Four previously unknown birds including the rufous winged sunbird and new species of partridge like francolin make the Tanzania richest forest bird habitat among the three most important bird conservation areas on the continent. One of the East Africa great forests, this undisturbed habitat undoubtedly has new treasures yet to reveal. A link in the chain of East Africa eastern arch mountains, Udzungwa is made for hiking and climbing on the trails through the rain forest and along the escarpments.
The plateau is a natural tower top, with a view of sugar plantations against the patchwork of grassland and mountain forest extending over 100km. but the centerpiece is the sanje River, which reinvents itself as the spectacular waterfall, plunging 170m through the forest to land in a mist in the valley below. Visit the udzungwa year-round, but be prepared for rain any time.
Day 7: Sanje Waterfalls Hiking
After breakfast, you will collect your picnic lunch and do a 4 to 6 hrs hike to Sanje waterfalls. In the late afternoon, you will return to Hondo Hondo Tented Camp for dinner and overnight.
Day 8: Departure
After breakfast drives back to Dar-Es-Salaam with picnic lunch for your departure flight.