A morning departure from your Arusha hotel begins the safari. You travel south for around two hours to Tarangire National Park where you can sit back to an afternoon of game viewing in a diverse and rewarding landscape. Tarangire is most famous for its mid-year dry-season game viewing when tens of thousands of animals gather at the life-giving Tarangire River, including some of the largest elephant herds in Tanzania. You will also be on the lookout for big cats, buffalo and giraffe as well as hippo and spotted hyena before leaving the park in the late afternoon and checking in at Lake Burunge Tented Camp. Set overlooking the eponymous lake just 10 minutes from the park, this friendly camp makes the perfect place to watch the sunset and toast the end of the day with a cold drink.

From one lake to another; today you leave the shores of Lake Burunge after breakfast and head for Lake Manyara and the surrounding national park for an extensive game drive. The park is centred round the lake itself, described by Ernest Hemingway as the most beautiful he had seen, and it remains a magnet for enormous numbers of birds, including tens of thousands of flamingos, if conditions are right. There are also large animals present, including the park’s famous large-tusked elephants and tree-climbing lions as well as herds of buffalo and zebra grazing on the lake’s floodplains. Leaving the park in the late afternoon you travel to Kirurumu Manyara Lodge for a night, a 20-minute drive from the park and enjoying an enviable setting on an escarpment with panoramic lake views.

You leave the Serengeti today but not without enjoying wildlife sightings all the way to the Ngorongoro Highlands and the Ngorongoro Crater. There is time to stop and marvel at the view from the rim of the world’s largest intact volcanic caldera before travelling on to Ngorongoro Farmhouse where you check in for two nights. Set in the quiet town of Karatu, Ngorongoro Farmhouse lies on a coffee farm and you can look forward to an afternoon tour of the estate, complete with views of Oldeani Volcano. The next day sees you on the Crater floor, enjoying a full-day safari in a destination with a reputation for the easiest Big 5 viewing in Africa – lion, leopard, rhino, elephant and buffalo are usually all seen within a day in the Crater. Back at your lodge you have a swimming pool to enjoy as well as Internet facilities and a laundry service.