Dar es Salaam/UdzungwaNP/Mikumi NP/Zanzibar/Dar es Salaam
includes: full board basis and includes all in-country transport and fees.
Not included: Drinks, gratuities International Flights and additional activities
Day 1
Flying into Dar es Salaam, you will be met at the airport and driven through the bustling city to the peaceful sanctuary of the Mediterraneo Hotel on Kawe Beach. This will give you a chance to acclimatise to Tanzania and look forward to the experience of the coming weeks.
Day 2
After an early breakfast, you will leave the city, escape the sprawling suburbs, and embark out onto the coastal plain. Rural Tanzania welcomes you. Following the old trade routes, you head west, past the Uluguru Mountains, through Mikumi National Park (don’t worry, you will return), to the Udzungwa Forest Campsite nestling beneath the mountain forests. Here, you will spend the night, enjoying a performance from the local dance and drumming troupe. Listen for the elephants feeding in the forest borders.
Day 3 – 7
Today you enter the Udzungwa Mountain National Park to begin your trek to the top of Mount Mwinihana. Before entering the park, you will sign in at park HQ (look out for the resident troupe of black and white colobus monkeys) and collect your ranger and guide. Then, after meeting with the porters who will carry the majority of your kit, you enter the forest and another world opens up to you.
The going is strenuous, but not mountainous. You will move quietly, taking frequent breaks, to look and listen, becoming accustomed to the forest. You will move through miombo woodland, to sub montane and then montane forest, eventually even passing through alpine grass lands. Listen for the birds and the monkeys, look for the chamelians as night falls.
The porters are carrying the tents, food and camping equipment, so each night will be spent in comfort, with good smells coming from the fire. Listen to how the sounds of the forest change as the day turns.
Day 8
Leaving the park, you will be met by the vehicles and driven the short distance to Mikumi Game Reserve. Mikumi is the northern expression of the Greater Selous Ecosystem and so, in addition to its resident wildlife populations of elephant, lion, buffalo and antelope, hosts transitory superstars of nature: packs of wild dog and massive bull elephants making their graceful way through a country they call their own. As camp is being built under the shade of an old baobab tree, you will go out on your first game drive.
Day 9
As the sun climbs behind the old baobab, you will go out again, this time on a walk. Wildlife walks allow you to take notice of the smaller aspects of life on the savanna, aspects of life in many ways of equal importance to the larger inhabitants. Your guides will explain the tracks and signs left by the nocturnal wanderers; tell the story of dung; and demonstrate how one does not have to see a the plumage of a bird to know its name.
Returning for a late breakfast, you will return to camp to laze through the heat of the day. As afternoon cools, you will go out in the vehicles again to explore another section of the park, taking sundowners in the face of another beautiful sunset.
Day 10
After a final early morning game drive – perhaps returning to a favourite area of the park, or tracking an elusive lion – you will leave the park and return to Dar es Salaam. But don’t worry: the city will not hold you for long. You are going to the docks and the fast ferry to Zanzibar. Stonetown gives its raucous welcome as you make your way through the crowds at the ferry terminal gates and enter city streets little changed from the time of Tales from the Arabian Nights.
Day 11-13
Zanzibar and the music festival are yours to enjoy. The festival centres upon the 15th century Portuguese fort on the waterfront, where performances are torchlit and the people gather in a spirit of utterly relaxed happiness. But there is no need to limit yourself to Stonetown, you will also be able to visit old Spice Plantations, introduce yourself to the habituated red colobus monkeys of Jozani Forest and sail cruise the waves with the dolphins of Kizimkazi. This is a whole different world to that of the forested mountains; which do you prefer.
Day 14
You will return to Dar es Salaam and your flight home, bidding farewell to the land of mountains and music.
