3-Day Tarangire & Lake Manyara Mid-Range Safari

You are met at Kilimanjaro International and head straight south: no night in town, which is what makes a three-day trip work. The drive takes you across the Maasai Steppe and into Tarangire by mid-afternoon, leaving time for a first game drive as the light softens. Elephants and baobabs make the introduction, and both are more impressive in person than in photographs.

Sangaiwe sits on a hillside just outside the park's western boundary with the whole Tarangire valley spread out below it. Arriving on day one rather than sleeping in Arusha buys you an extra half day in the bush, and on a short itinerary that half day counts for a great deal.

A morning game drive in Tarangire while the air is still cool, then a short drive north to Lake Manyara, one of the easiest transfers on the whole northern circuit. The afternoon is spent inside Manyara, working from the forest at the gate out to the lakeshore, with the Rift Valley escarpment standing over everything.

The two parks could hardly be less alike, which is the point of pairing them. Tarangire is dry, open and dominated by elephant and baobab; Manyara is green, dense and full of water, with flamingos in the shallows, hippos in the pools, and baboon troops among the largest anywhere in Africa. Two entirely different kinds of country in two days.

One last morning drive through Manyara, when the forest is loud with birds and the game is still moving ahead of the heat, then an easy run back to Arusha arriving by early afternoon. From there it is the airport, or a transfer on to your Kilimanjaro climb or wherever you are heading next.

Three days is short, but it is enough to see two genuinely distinct parks properly rather than rushing four. If the tree-climbing lions have shown themselves, you have seen something plenty of people who spend a fortnight here never manage. They lie along the acacia branches through the middle of the day, and picking one out takes a good guide and a little luck.