7-Day Tarangire, Serengeti and Ngorongoro Safari with Empakai and Olmoti Craters

At 5:45 am you take a breakfast box and set out for a sunrise game drive, when predators are most active. You carry on through the park until the afternoon, then return to camp for a hot lunch. After lunch you head out again and keep exploring Tarangire's river valley and woodlands until late in the day, then drive on to your next campsite for dinner and the night.

After breakfast you set out on a full-day game drive with picnic lunches, crossing the Ngorongoro Conservation Area and watching for wildlife on the way to the central Serengeti. As the highlands drop onto the open plains, you enter the land of the great migration, where more than a million wildebeest follow the rains each year. You arrive at your campsite in the central Serengeti in time for dinner.

At 5:30 am you take a breakfast box and head out for a sunrise game drive, returning to camp at 8:30 am. Then, with a picnic lunch, you spend the whole day in the park. Your guide chooses the best areas for the time of year: the hippo pool, where hippos share the water with crocodiles, the lion prides, and, in season, the migration herds of wildebeest and zebras. Leopard and cheetah are harder to find, but always possible.

After an early breakfast you drive to Ngorongoro and descend 610 metres to the crater floor for about six hours of game viewing, with lunch in the crater. Look for endangered black rhino, lions, elephants, zebras, buffaloes and wildebeest, and for flamingos and other birds on the soda lake. All these grazers support lions and leopards, with hyenas and jackals close behind. In the late evening you drive up to the rim for the night.

After breakfast you drive to Olmoti Crater for an hour's walk around the crater and a visit to the waterfall, then have lunch near Bulati Maasai primary school. After lunch you walk about 9 km, four hours, to Empakai, with views of Kilimanjaro, Meru and Olmoti. Empakai is 300 metres deep, its floor half covered by a soda lake, and bushbuck, buffaloes and blue monkeys live on the rim. On a clear day you can see Ol Doinyo Lengai and Lake Natron.

After breakfast you walk slowly, pole pole, down the steep path into Empakai Crater and around the lake, with lunch on the crater floor at the water's edge. Buffaloes, waterbuck, reedbuck, zebras, wildebeest and many birds can be seen at close range. In all this is about six hours of walking, down and back up, so take it slowly and drink plenty of water. After lunch you climb back to the rim and meet the vehicle for the drive back to Arusha.