Itinerary

Day 1 Travel day International flight

Day 2
Onsea House
Arusha
Pickup at Kilimanjaro Airport by your Deeper Africa guide after clearing
customs. Your guide will have a sign with your name on it. Transport to
Onsea House for an evening dinner and overnight
Overnight at Onsea House. Swimming pool available.

Day 3
Plantation Lodge
Ngorongoro Conservation
Area
Breakfast at Onsea House. Begin the drive to Ngorongoro Crater after
breakfast. While you are in Tanzania, you’ll begin the Deeper Africa Natural
Learning educational program focusing first on animal identification and
learning to distinguish animal species. As well, your Deeper Africa guide
will begin to introduce you to conservation issues including: human wildlife
conflicts, poaching controls and conflicts, and community involvement in
wildlife conservation. Your guide will have a set of guide books and
reference books in the Land Cruiser which are available for your use.
Check in at Plantation Lodge with lunch before you head into the Crater.
The vast Ngorongoro Crater is an expansive environment inside an extinct
volcano. The Crater floor is mostly grasslands providing excellent wildlife
visibility and a wonderful opportunity for photography. Zebra, wildebeest,
and gazelle mingle together, while herds of buffalo graze the long grass
areas. Bull elephants and rhino are often seen feeding in green marshes as
are plentiful hyena. The lakes and marshes are home to exotic waterfowl.
Hippos lounge in the water holes, and it is not uncommon to see lions.
While wildlife viewing, you’ll have a cool box in your Land Cruiser stocked
with water and your favorite sodas.
Dinner and overnight at Plantation Lodge.

Day 4
Plantation Lodge
Ngorongoro Conservation
Area
Breakfast at the Plantation Lodge. Early morning wildlife viewing in the
Crater. Morning is a special time in the natural world, with dawn bringing
lots of activity. Between 20,000 and 30,000 animals wander the Crater floor.
The Crater ecosystem showcases an astonishing microcosm of East African
wildlife environments: grasslands, wetlands, acacia forest, and soda lake
environments - with beautiful flocks of flamingos at the right time of day.
Picnic lunch in the Crater.
Leave the Crater in the late afternoon to meet up with your walking guide
for an afternoon hike around the rim of the Crater. Walk through traditional
Maasai enkangs (homesteads) among some of the game herds and smaller
creatures. Learn about medicinal plants, scat, and wildlife track
identification. The hike is between two and three hours - at your pace.
Dinner and overnight at Plantation Lodge.

Day 5 Oliver’s Camp Breakfast at Plantation Lodge. Drive out after breakfast to Tarangire
Tarangire National Park
National Park. You’ll begin your wildlife viewing as you travel to Oliver’s
Camp for check in. Lunch at the lodge and spend the afternoon viewing
wildlife in the park. Oliver’s Camp is located in the remote southeast section
of Tarangire National Park. This area of the park is an unspoiled wilderness
zone far away from other lodges or camps. Off-road game driving and
walking safaris are allowed in this wilderness area.
Tarangire contains a range of ecosystem: from grassland and woodlands in
the north, to scrub and wetlands further south. The Tarangire River cuts
through the park and empties into Lake Burunge in the west. As water
sources dry up in the park after the end of the rainy season, animals migrate
to the only permanent water available - the Tarangire River and the Silale
Swamp system. Huge numbers of zebras make up the majority of the herds
in Tarangire. Wildebeests, buffalos, and antelope are found as well.
Tarangire boasts one of the largest and most conspicuous elephant
populations in East Africa. There are large family groups with many calves
being born each year. The population continues to recover from the
devastating effects of poaching in the eighties. You will see herds of
elephants, and gain up-close encounters with the matriarchs, babies,
teenagers, and bulls. Your close contact will help expand your
understanding of these incredible animals. Spend several hours surrounded
by the herds, and you cannot help but feel their wisdom. Tarangire is also
known for its abundant baobab trees, most of which are over 600 years old.
Dinner and overnight at Oliver’s Camp deep within Tarangire National
Park.

Day 6
Oliver’s Camp
Tarangire National Park
Breakfast at Oliver’s Camp. Oliver’s Camp is located close to the stunning,
rarely visited Silale Swamps. Likewise, it lies in close proximity to the
eastern region of Tarangire. This area hosts lesser and greater kudu -
animals rarely seen in the rest of northern Tanzania. Due to the remote
location, days can be spent wildlife viewing without meeting any other
tourists. This area of Tarangire is a birder’s paradise due to the wide variety
of habitats and food sources. Over 550 bird species have been recorded in
Tarangire.
Set your wildlife viewing schedule with your guide arranging picnic lunch or
lunch at Oliver’s Camp. Now, your learning opportunities shift to scanning
the horizon for wildlife and tracking from a distance.
Dinner and overnight at Oliver’s Camp.

Day 7
Oliver’s Camp
Tarangire National Park
Breakfast at Oliver’s Camp. Set your wildlife viewing schedule with your
guide as you choose.
Oliver’s Camp offers the unique opportunity to leave the vehicle behind and
share the earth with Tarangire’s wildlife. Walking safaris are guided by
experienced in-residence walking guides. An armed ranger also accompanies
the walks. Animals are usually spotted on walking safaris; the goal is not to
get as close as possible to the wildlife, but rather to observe their
undisturbed behavior. This is the only area in Tarangire where tracking and
spotting skills can be learned on foot.
Dinner and overnight at Oliver’s Camp.

Day 8
Campi ya Kanzi
Chyulu Hills Tribal Land
Breakfast at Oliver’s Camp. Begin your drive back to Arusha. You’ll return
for lunch at Arusha Coffee Lodge for your final meal in Tanzania. After
lunch your guide will drive you to Namanga on the Kenyan border for your
border crossing.
Once you clear customs, your Tanzanian guide will be allowed to drive you
just inside the Kenyan border to the Taveta bush strip. There you will meet
up with the Campi ya Kanzi bush pilot. Enjoy the ½ hour bush flight from
Namanga to Campi ya Kanzi in the Chyulu Hills - Hemingway’s “Green
Hills of Africa.” Campi ya Kanzi will be waiting at the bush strip to pick
you up and transfer you to the lodge. Luca Belpietro and Antonella
Bonomi, the Italian owners of Campi ya Kanzi, will meet up with you soon
after you arrive. We leave you for these three days in their capable hands.
Campi ya Kanzi has a wide range of daily activities, including:
Morning or afternoon wildlife viewing in Land Rovers;
Escorted walking safaris;
Forest walks;
Bird watching;
Chuylu National Park excursions;
Cultural visits to the local Maasai villages;
Bush breakfast and bush dinners.
Relaxation.
Enjoy the most wonderful “Italian cuisine in the bush” and the views of
Kilimanjaro from the deck of your Campi ya Kanzi room. Dinner and
overnight at Campi ya Kanzi.

Day 9
Campi ya Kanzi
Chyulu Hills Tribal Land
Breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Plan your daily activities with Luca and
Antonella.
Campi ya Kanzi is part of a unique partnership with the Maasai tribal council
of the Kuku Group Ranch - 280,000 acres of land in the Chyulu Hills. The
Maasai have participated in all stages of the development of Campi ya Kanzi
including: building the lodge and guest houses, managing, and running the
camp. All of the buildings have been built with local materials. The whole
camp has been built with the lowest environmental impact. Electricity is
provided by solar panels and hot water through a solar boiler. No firewood
is used for booking or heating water; and the kitchen stoves burn a special
ecological charcoal, made from coffee husks. Vegetables are grown
organically, without the use of pesticides or chemical fertilizers. All water is
recycled through lava filters and used to feed a waterhole and wildlife. Over
70 Maasai from the local community earn their livelihood through Campi ya
Kanzi.
There is incredible biodiversity in the Chyulu Hills. You are able to
experience most of the varied ecosystems of Kenya such as: mountain
forest, grasslands, green river woodlands, bush, and savannah. About 63
different mammals and 400 bird species are found on the ranch including:
elephant, rhino, leopard, lion, and buffalo.
Campi ya Kanzi’s goal is to make wildlife profitable through tourism. Campi
ya Kanzi involves the local tribal population in ecotourism practices. A daily
conservation fee is paid by each guest to the local Maasai community.
Tourist dollars are used by the local community to support:
A primary school on the Group Ranch;
A dispensary for the local community: and
To compensate tribal people who have incurred losses through damage by
wildlife through the Simba Project.
The extraordinary efforts of Campi ya Kanzi have been recognized within
the ecotourism community as the winner of the following ecotourism
awards:
2006 Winner of Eco-Warrior Award
2006 Winner of Tourism for Tomorrow Award
2005 Winner of the Skal International Ecotourism Award
2004 World Legacy Award.

Day 10 Mara West Camp
Maasai Mara Game Reserve
Breakfast at Campi ya Kanzi with early morning bush flight directly to the
Maasai Mara.

Deeper Africa staff will be waiting with the Land Cruiser to pick you up at
the bush strip in the Maasai Mara. As you fly westward you’ll notice the
landscape change to drier savannah grasslands and begin to note the many
herds of cattle tended by local Maasai herdsmen.
You’ll begin wildlife viewing as soon as you enter the Mara, traveling the
distance to Mara West Camp. You’ll arrive at camp in the
early afternoon for lunch with afternoon wildlife viewing. While you’re in
the Mara you’ll have daily wildlife viewing from 6:00 am to 6:00 pm with the
flexibility to schedule each day as you choose with your guide.
Wide arrays of habitats are represented in the Mara - each with a unique
complement of flora and fauna. Acacia woodlands attract giraffes, while
hippos occupy the deeper river pools. But it is the East Africa savannah
grasslands and the herds and predators of the savannah that make the Mara
famous. Wildebeest are well suited to harvest the short grasses that cover
the semiarid plains of the Serengeti. The soils of this region have an
underlying hardpan covered by a fertile layer of volcanic soil. Grass growing
in this soil is highly nutritious, taking up nutrients trapped by the hard pan.
The eastern and western Mara, as well as the Mara River areas, are all
accessible to you by Land Cruiser. The variety of ecosystems makes the
Mara a superb place to hone your tracking and spotting skills allowing you
continued opportunities to increase your wildlife knowledge.
The Maasai Mara is the northern section of the Serengeti. In the Maasai
language, the word ‘Serengeti’ means endless plain. This vast savannah grass
land extends southward into Tanzania for over five thousand square miles of
land, forming one of the world’s largest wildlife refuges. This is land as it
was in the beginning: no fences, no settlements, just a perennial migration
of wildlife. In a journey that dates back through time, these herds of animals
(currently estimated at 1.25 million) follow the seasonal rains, traveling north
into the Mara from Tanzania and instinctually moving with the seasonal
rainfalls. They sometimes migrate as much as 300 miles a year. Wildlife is
allowed to roam freely across the Kenyan and Tanzanian borders, uniting
the two parks into a single ecological unit which supports the largest
concentration of large mammals on the planet.
Dinner and overnight at Mara West Camp.

Day 11
Mara West Camp
Maasai Mara Game Reserve
Breakfast at Mara West Camp. Tailor your wildlife viewing schedule today
with your Deeper Africa guide. He is your mentor and advisor and he will
have lots of suggestions about the best areas for wildlife viewing. Choices
for wildlife viewing include:
Morning and afternoon wildlife viewing with lunch at Governors Camp;
All day wildlife viewing with picnic lunch; or
Wildlife viewing out before sunrise with return for brunch and afternoon
wildlife viewing.
At last count there were 22 lion prides in the Mara. Females within a lion
pride are related to each other. Daughters, mothers, grandmothers, aunts,
and nieces live together for up to 15 years - the typical lifespan of a lioness.
Males are forced to leave the pride at between two to three years of age.
When not attached to a pride, lions are nomadic, occasionally banding
together with other male cousins or brothers. The majority of prides in the
Mara have two or three adult males, but the males in power can form larger
alliances. Nomadic males are a constant territorial threat to the pride males.
Ask your guide about the better pride viewing opportunities for your safari
season. He will consider taking you near Musiara Marsh, near the
Governors Camp area of the Mara, which is prime territory for the Marsh
lion pride. Other pride territories are near Rhino Ridge, near Paradise Plain,
and near Kichwa Tembo. Each of these pride territories vary in size. The
controlling factors tend to be habitat and the availability of food. Some
Mara prides can do quite well with small amounts of territory, while other
prides require substantially larger amounts of ground. While pride members
defend their territories they can never keep an exclusive lock on all of their
territory. Overlaps at the edges of the territories find young nomadic males
creating confrontations whenever possible. During migration season, the
lions prosper with sufficient food to feed all of the pride members. But
once the herds migrate south into Tanzania, the resident wildlife becomes
the prime target and territory and hunting skills become the means of
survival.
Dinner and overnight at Mara West Camp.

Day 12
Mara West Camp
Maasai Mara Game Reserve
Breakfast at Mara West Camp. The annual migration is what makes the
Mara famous. The herds gather in the hundreds of thousands on the plains
of the Mara during July, August, September, October, and into November.
The herds are drawn into the northern Serengeti region by areas of greater
rainfall where the grasses grow taller and stay greener longer. The migration
includes vast herds of wildebeest, but also zebra and Thomson’s gazelle.
Those herds remain in the Mara for up to four months chomping, trampling
the grass, grunting, and stampeding across the Mara River in search of fresh
grass for grazing. It is the superabundance of prey that accounts for the
Mara’s big predator populations. The onset of the “short rains” sometime in
November or early December sends them south into the Serengeti for fresh
grass.
The Mara savannahs with their open country and grasslands support a
healthy cheetah population. Cheetahs face increasing pressure from humans
and land encroachment - with between 9,000 to 12,000 left in the world.
You’ll be scouting for cheetah in one of the two remaining cheetah
strongholds in the world: the Mara/Serengeti ecosystem. (The other
significant cheetah population is in Namibia and Botswana.)
The Mara cheetah population is threatened by a lack of genetic variation,
making them susceptible to disease and decreasing reproduction. Still there
have been a number of cub births in the Mara cheetah population over the
past five years. Cheetahs live in small groups or singly, not in prides. The
famous BBC documentary “Big Cats Diary” has filmed quite a number of
Mara cheetah mothers with their cubs in the past few seasons. Look
carefully around the termite mounds as they are popular hiding places for
the Mara cheetahs.
Dinner and overnight at Mara West Camp.

Day 13 House of Waine
Nairobi
Day Room
Breakfast and early morning game drive at Mara West.
While in the Serengeti, you can also study some of the great challenges
facing the stability of the Serengeti migratory herds. In most other areas of
Africa, major wildebeest herds have died out because of ever-expanding
human populations which demand land for agriculture, domestic livestock,
and water resources. Humans’ need for land at the edges of the Mara and
their need for water resources threaten to reduce the migration range and
access to water resources. It is land available for grazing and access to water
that determine the size of the Serengeti wildebeest population. The herd’s
population varies yearly depending on rainfall and how much grassland is
available. When there is not enough food or water, the weakest members of
the population starve. In the absence of severe drought, most of the culling
will occur late in the dry season, just before the “short rains” begin.
Use the afternoon for showering, packing and getting ready for your evening
international flight.

Bush flight to Nairobi.
Departs Mara bush strip @ 11:00 am
Arrives Nairobi @ 12:15 pm
You will say good bye to your Deeper Africa guide at the Mara bush strip as
he will need to return the Land Cruiser to Nairobi. Deeper Africa staff will
be waiting for you at Wilson Regional Airport when your flight arrives from
the Mara. You’ll have dinner at a local Nairobi restaurant called Talisman to
savor some local flavor. Evening transport to your international flight at
Jomo Kenyatta International Airport.

Day 14 Travel day International flight

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