1-Day Tanzania Safari Day Trips from Arusha

Every option leaves your Arusha or Moshi hotel at dawn and has you back by late afternoon. The Ngorongoro Crater is the most popular: a half-day safari on the floor of the world's largest intact caldera, with a picnic lunch. Tarangire offers elephant herds and thousand-year-old baobabs; Lake Manyara has tree-climbing lions and flamingos; Arusha National Park is the quiet gem, with giraffe, colobus monkeys and canoeing on Momella Lake. Away from the parks, Materuni Waterfalls is a half-day hike through coffee farms to a 70-metre cascade, and the Marangu cultural tour visits a village in the Kilimanjaro foothills.

Which to choose depends on what you actually have. If it is your only day in Tanzania, take the crater, nothing else delivers as much in six hours. If you are acclimatising before a Kilimanjaro climb, Materuni or Marangu keep you moving gently at altitude without exhausting you. And if you have already done a safari and want something different, Arusha National Park is the one that lets you get out of the vehicle.