Tanzania travel
Safari in Tanzania is an incredible experience!
Getting to Tanzania
There are direct flights to Nairobi from the New York area. Kenya airlines was the cheapest and we thought the staff were really nice. Nairobi is close the region of Tanzania most do safari in but the layovers can be 6-12 hours. For 6 hours we got in a lounge for ~$35 and for 12 hours we got a visa ($50) into Kenya and went to a hotel near the airport. Totally worth the cost.
Activities and Lodging
We typically rent a car and wing it with where to go and stay. We did this for Tanzania for 2 weeks and would not recommended it to most travelers. Places to stay are booked far in advance so unless you want to tent on the roof, you probably should plan ahead. We planned 2 weeks in advance of the flight and lucked out getting great places to stay. However, we way over-paid using services like Booking.com. What we learned is tour operators get much lower prices so even if you don’t use them for transport, it is often better to have an in-country person book you.
Now for driving. You will pay way more and be much more stressed if you drive yourself. In fact, it will be very hard for you to rent the right vehicle to get into a park. In short only Land Cruisers are allowed in the parks. Land Rovers are rare and hard to fix during breakdowns. What is confusing is you can rent something like a Rav4 but you can’t take it in to a park. While this may seem silly, the dirt paths in the parks are no joke. In 2 weeks we only saw 1 other non-guided vehichle and they were likely from a different part of Africa. We rented the Rav4 from a local rental company in advanced. They emailed us reminding us you can’t use in a park. I then rented a Land Cruiser Prado. When we got to the country nobody was there with a car. Eventually someone took us to our first night lodging (1 hour from airport) and said they would bring the car later. Late at night someone arrived and they took 2 hours to rent the car to me. They were totally freaked out that I would wreck it as it just was delivered from Japan that day. It wasn’t a LR Prado but the more resilient model LR 700. Now it actually was used from Japan but new to them. I had to take a driving test (stick shift) and talk to the owner of the company. They give you extra tires and jerry cans as there is no fuel in the Serengetti (actually not true but almost true). We were also used to safari in South Africa where basically you can drive to a lodge and then the guides work for the lodge and take you our in their vehicles to spot game. This isn’t how Tanzania works. Everyone gets a guide & driver and are taken to different lodges then those same guides take you on game drives. So self-drive in Tanzania is self-animal guide too.
Our first game tent camp maybe took 8 hours of difficult driving to get to. There are broken-down tourists (with guides) everywhere. GPS is misleading to worthless and just finding camps is an adventure. It was relatively dry but we still had to drive through deep water features and were absolutely almost got stuck. Having said that there are animals everywhere as there are few places they can hide in the vast fields.
You can see Every site, hotel, and restaurant is listed
Lodging is expensive ($250-$500/night) Park fees - about $250 per day. Note there is a whole process they guides have to do to get into a park. We made it through each entrance but it is not an easy process.
Recommenations
Use a guide with vehicle. You can probably get one without a group of other people and I would recommend this vs. a group tour.
Live with the Maasai a semi-nomadic indigenous ethnic group living in southern, central, and northern Kenya and northern Tanzania at least 1 day.
Make sure you are amazed by animals. We did witness some people who once they saw a lion or elephant became bored and went on their phones. Hard for us to imagine.
Stay in tent camps. These are luxury. There are ultra-luxury hotels I personally would avoid. I mean $500/night is a lot. $5000/night may not give you the experience of lions outside your tent.
We built our itinerary based on Youtube videos and other research. We got a quote from 2-3 companies and these packages were cheaper than what we paid doing it ourselves. For example, it is cheaper to have a guide/driver with a Land Cruiser than for you to rent a Land Cruiser. While doing it we had some regrets as all the pressure was on us. Post-trip it was definately an adventure and we are happy we survived.
Video
Tools
Booking.com – convenient way to find and book camps - recommend using but booking through a local guide
Google Maps - save places but don’t rely on for the park
Offline Maps app - there are several and worth checking if a good one exists for the back roads of Tanzania
Phone - coverage spotty and often need to use texting