Unique Safaris Green Season Sample itinerary - Blue Sky Wildlife

Unique Safaris Green Season Sample itinerary November-May

If it’s Unique, the difference is clear

DAY ACCOMMODATION / LOCATION

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Arrive in the early evening on KLM into Kilimanjaro International Airport. VIP Meet and greet by Unique Safaris and transfer to Arusha town (45 min) to the African Tulip Hotel for dinner and overnight.

African Tulip Hotel Arusha

VIP arrival services include the cost of your Tanzania visa pre-paid and a private officer to assist your group through Immigration, Baggage and Customs www.theafricantulip.com 2

African Tulip Hotel Arusha

3

Sametu Camp Central Serengeti

Enjoy a day of culture and children! Enjoy a town tour of Arusha and a visit to the School of St. Jude and have lunch with the primary students. (www.schoolofstjude.org). This remarkable organization provides a free quality education for the most disadvantaged children in the Arusha district. Tour the campus, ride the school buses home with the students and participate in a home visit to meet some families. Dinner/overnight at African Tulip After an early breakfast, transfer to the Arusha airport and fly to the central Serengeti. Check in is at 7:30 and the flight leaves at 8:00 and arrives around 10:00 depending upon other possible bush stops. Meet and greet by your private vehicle/guide and immediately begin your first game drive in the Serengeti as you travel to Sametu Camp for a hot lunch and afternoon game drive. www.karibucampcollection.com

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Explore the vast areas of the central Serengeti, including the Sametu and Barafu Kopjes, the Retima Hippo Pool, Seronera River Valley and the Maasai, Simba and Moru Kopjes as well. The central Serengeti is excellent leopard habitat and offer a huge number of antelopes and elephants as well as the big herds and super prides of lions. The camp is located in the east-central Serengeti, in the beautiful Sametu Kopjes. This area of the central Serengeti has large prides of lion and a healthy population of cheetah. Sametu Camp has only 8 tents and is located near the banks of the Ngarenyuki River, often attracting many animals as a source of water.

Sametu Camp Central Serengeti

5

Woodlands Camp Southern Serengeti

6

Woodland Camp Southern Serengeti Plains

After an early breakfast game drive through the Gol Kopjes to reach the southern Serengeti Plains. The Gol Kopjes are a fragile habitat and require a special permit to drive through the short-grass plains. Cheetah especially love this area because their favorite prey–Thomson gazelle-thrive on the rich short grass that grows here. Hopefully you will be in the Serengeti at the peak of the wildebeest calving with almost 750,000 calves being born. The pregnant females require the short grasses found in the southern plains for the nutrients that are critical for good lactation. This is a wonderful example of “swarm intelligence” because a higher percent of calves survive when so many are born each day (sometimes 10,000 calves a day). Your three days will allow you to visit a number of key areas of the southern plains, including Lake Ndutu, Lake Masek, the Gol Kopjes, the Moru Kopjes and possibly Hidden Valley. Woodland s Camp is located just west of Lake Ndutu in an important wildlife corridor. www.karibucampcollection.com

With a normal weather pattern consisting of short rains (short bursts of rain usually at night an in the late afternoons), the calving takes place on the southern Serengeti Plains, which offers some added protection from predators due to the shorter grass. Wildebeest like to travel with zebra to take advantage of their extraordinary sight and sense of smell for spotting predators. And zebra like to travel with wildebeest to take advantage of their extraordinary ability to smell promising rain clouds.


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7

Woodland Camp

Explore the vast areas of the southern Serengeti Plains. Return each night for a lovely campfire and refreshments as you shower and are ready for dinner in the bush. Woodlands Camp is located right on the border between the Serengeti National Park and Ngorongoro Conservation Land. As such, we plan for double permits for each park so that you are not restricted in your game drives. The Ngorongoro Conservation Land allows more off-road driving so you will have additional freedom in some of these areas, until you cross onto Serengeti National Park land.

Southern Serengeti Plains

8

Lions Paw Camp Ngorongoro Crater

Say goodbye to the Serengeti and drive toward Ngorongoro Crater, the jewel of the Ngorongoro Conservation Land. Stop along the way to visit Olduvai Gorge, the site of Louis and Mary Leakey’s famous archeological discoveries. You also can choose to stop at a Maasai boma to visit. Continue to the western descent road, arriving around noon and go down the Crater floor for an afternoon game drive. Ascend on the eastern rim to Lions Paw Camp for dinner and overnight. The rim of the Crater sits at 7,500-8,000 feet of elevation so nights can be chilly. Lions Paw has heaters in each tent and always places a hot water bottle in your bed at night to keep your toes toasty. www.karibucampcollection.com

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Lions Paw Camp Ngorongoro Crater

Prepare to leave Lion’s Paw by 5:45 am so you can check in at the ranger post and be the first vehicle on the Crater floor. In general, all of your game drives will begin by 6:00 am unless you specifically request otherwise. Hot breakfast will be served at all bush properties to accommodate early departures. Early mornings are the best times for photography (soft lighting) and greater predator activity as you may see some of the lion kills from the previous night. Enjoy a picnic lunch in the Crater and return to Lions Paw before curfew at 18:00.


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Gibbs Farm or The Retreat

Enjoy a relaxing morning at Lions Paw and then drive through the Crater Highlands to Gibbs Farm or The Retreat in the Karatu area. Karatu is a busy and colorful town as well as a hub for growing maize, beans, tea and coffee. Arrive in time to check in and then enjoy their scrumptious hot buffet lunch. Gibbs is an active coffee plantation and organic farm and they grow all their food on their land. You can participate in any of the daily farm activities (collecting eggs, picking vegetables for meals, bread making, coffee roasting) free of charge. You can also enjoy a number of free hikes in the Crater Forest or mountain biking into town. The Retreat is located almost next door to Gibbs Farm and was planned as a celebration of bird life. The gardens, trees and lake were all planned to attract a large number of bird species set against the stunning background of the Ngorongoro Forest Reserve. The Retreat also has guided hikes, birding on the grounds, mountain bikes and village visits.

Karatu /Manyara area

www.gibbsfarm.com or www.theretreatatngorongoro.com 11

Gibbs Farm or The Retreat Karatu/Manyara area

12

African Tulip dayroom/dinner Arusha-depart

You may choose to relax at the lodge, visit Lake Manyara NP or visit the Hadzapi tribe in nearby Lake Eyasi. The Hadzapi are Tanzania’s Bushmen with less than 1,200 individuals remaining. They are nomadic hunters and gatherers and enjoy showing you how they collect poison for their arrows and their hunting prowess. Depart after breakfast and drive back to Arusha (2 hours) driving through the village of Mto wa Mbu. Mto wa Mbu is known for growing a large variety of bananas and sampling some of the species is very enjoyable. Stop along the way to shop at the African Gallery and then continue to Arusha in time for a hot lunch at the Arusha Coffee Lodge. Continue to the African Tulip for a dayroom with time to shower, pack and relax a little bit. Dinner is available for anyone who is hungry. Early evening transfer to Kilimanjaro International Airport (JRO) for your return flight to the US.


Ngorongoro Crater

Serengeti National Park

Ngorongoro Crater is the jewel located within the larger Ngorongoro Conservation Area. The NCA was the world’s first multi-purpose land use area with the goal to host not only tourism, research and conservation efforts, but also to allow local pastoralists access to ancestral grazing land and to protect the past and current archeological sites for early hominid discoveries. Within this large area defined from the Ngorongoro Forest in the Karatu region all the way to the Serengeti, lies Ngorongoro Crater - one of seven World Heritage Sites designated in Tanzania and the world’s largest intact and unflooded caldera. This means the entire rim of the old volcano is intact. The Crater is only 12 miles wide and 100 square miles in total with the floor at an elevation of 5,600 feet and the rim of the Crater walls reaching another 2,000 feet in elevation. The Crater floor provides six distinct habitats: acacia forest, swamp, short -grass, long grass, riverine and woodland. Each habitat attracts a variety of animals. The Crater is home to almost 30,000 animals in an area naturally enclosed by the slopes of the volcano. Despite the high walls of the Crater, approximately 20% of the herd animals do migrate in and out. However, the lion population remains rather steady between 55-65 individuals. The lions of the Crater lack genetic diversity because new males do not venture down in the Crater to challenge the males of these in-bred prides. Ngorongoro Crater boasts the highest density of hyena in any location in Africa. The Crater is one of the best locations for viewing black rhino and the huge old bull elephants. There is not enough vegetation or shade to support the large cow and calf herds, but the old males “retire” to the Crater for the wonderful swamp grass and acacia forest. The only animals you will not see in the Crater are the impala and giraffe. There is not enough food for impala do not inhabit the Crater and giraffe are unable to descend the steep grade without lowering their heads, which raises their blood pressure to dangerous levels. Birding in the Crater is a delight, with over 500 recorded species and an ease in exploring different habitats all within rather close range of each other. Look for the golden-winged and Tacazze sunbirds, Rufous-tailed weaver, Jackson’s widow bird and pallid harrier, as well as the grey-crested Helmut shrike and the beautiful crowned cranes.

Serengeti National Park, recognized as a World Heritage Site, is one of the most famous wildlife areas in the world and is considered the world’s oldest protected ecosystem. Serengeti National Park as we know it today was gazetted in 1951, but a smaller area first received protection between 1921-29 by the British to prevent decimation of the lion population from hunting. The park itself is 5,700 square miles, but the more extensive Serengeti eco-system is over 9,600 square miles of protected land from Ngorongoro all the way to Loliondo and Kenya (the smaller Maasai Mara) and including the Maswa Game Reserve on the southern boundary of the park. The Serengeti is the largest national park in Tanzania, with a staggering animal population of almost four million and 523 recorded species of birds. It is the largest wildlife sanctuary in the world and the site of one of the most breathtaking events in animal kingdom-the migration of more than 1.5 million wildebeest and another 250,000 zebra. The area consists of treeless many varied habitats– acacia woodlands, open savannah dotted with granite outcroppings called kopjes, and riverine bush and forest in the north. The park’s name is derived from the Maasai language “SIRINGET” which means endless plains. The famous “Migration” that people dream to experience, is actually a dynamic process taking a full year to complete. There are different ‘events’ that happen during the year and in different locations in this park. There are two primary “seasons” in the Serengeti. They are the green season and the dry season. During the green season (November-June), there are short periods of rain usually at night and in the late afternoon. During this time, the wildebeest and zebra herds leave the northern part of the Serengeti and travel east and south into the short grass plain of the central, southern and eastern Serengeti. The herd traditionally splits into two distinct migratory routes, with pregnant females and dominant males moving directly south, through the Seronera area and onward to the short-grass plains of the southern Serengeti. The bachelor males move easterly around the Gol Mountains and then south through the Gol Pass, the Gol Kopjes and onto the southern plains. The female wildebeest need to be in this area to begin the calving, as they rely on this particular kind of grass for calving and milk production, that is high in calcium, potassium and magnesium. Wildebeest calving can begin anytime between January-March. More than 750,000 females will drop their calves within a 3-week period of time, so preda-


Serengeti National Park (continued)

Manyara National Park

The short grass plains also offer some of the best protection against predators, as they are more visible to the herd animals. Herd animals will remain in this area as long as there is decent rain that continues in the following months, although they only need short bursts of rain to be happy. The wildebeest rut, or re-breeding of the herd, usually begins near the full moon in April and last through the month of May and sometimes into June depending upon when the rut began. At this time the herd usually begins to move to the Central Serengeti but will travel large distances still following the best grazing and water. These are some of the most amazing herd sightings, as the male and females herd reunite for breeding. The herd movement continues both west and north between May usually to the end of July. At this point, the herd disperses a bit and males without females may migrate directly north to the Mara and some may move to the famous Western Corridor and remain year round in the Serengeti. During the dry season (July-Oct), we recommend significant time in the northern Serengeti to have the opportunity to witness river crossings. The majority of the wildebeest and zebra herds (65%) remain in the Serengeti all year round and often are seen in the areas of Lobo Valley, Bologonja and Kogatende, where grazing remains excellent. Herds now cross over the Mara River multiple times during the dry season and remain in the area until the short rains signal it is time to move onward. The area of the central Serengeti is a location to be enjoyed all year round, because of the large cat populations. Cats do not migrate with the herds, so during the dry season they are actually more actively searching for dwindling food sources. The Serengeti has the largest population of lions (3,200) inn all of Africa, primarily due to the abundance of food. We always recommend spending time in at least two locations in the Serengeti to maximize your wildlife viewing in this huge and spectacular park.

Lake Manyara National Park is 80 miles from Arusha town. It is a small park of only 130 square miles and 80 square miles consists of the soda lake. Manyara is bordered by the western wall of the Great Rift Valley (3,150 feet altitude) and the shallow alkaline Lake Manyara. The park derives its name from the Maasai word “manyara” which is a species of Euphorbia plant used to build the Maasai stockades for their cattle and goats. Lake Manyara National Park is notable for elephants, hippos and tree-climbing lions. Actually, it is quite hard to see tree-climbing lions in Lake Manyara, due to the brush and woodland. The behavior of lions climbing trees was first observed in this park, but lions do climb trees in Tarangire and the Serengeti as well. The park was first made famous by the elephant researcher Ian Douglas Hamilton and Manyara was established specifically to protect the elephants herds. This park has the highest density of elephants boasting 7 elephants per square kilometer. Manyara is a birding paradise more than 400 species are resident all year round. The species include a large variety of hornbill species including the huge and colorful ground hornbill, pied kingfisher, white and pink-backed pelicans, hamerkop, crowned eagle, longcrested eagle and a lovely variety of bee-eaters, sunbirds and whydah birds. The park is also known for its large troops of baboons and the famous Hippo Pool also providing over 40 species of waterfowl in the area. Lake Manyara is an excellent park to visit during the green season (November-June), but many of the mammals migrate to Tarangire during the dry season (July-October) for the water in the Tarangire River.
