The Nature of Tanzania

Tanzania’s wildlife is as rich and bountiful as any place’s on earth, but there are a couple of other things that command our attention: the country’s gentle people and its great soaring landscapes—exceptional, even for a continent as vast and soaring as Africa.

Flying into the northern town of Arusha, we have a night to recover from jet lag, then we’re off to Tarangire National Park and Chem Chem, a welcoming and uniquely beautiful spot. From there we’re whisked off to the quintessential Lost World of the Ngorongoro Crater. Our lodge is perched on the crater rim, with breath-stopping views of the caldera’s 100-square-mile floor, rich with nearly every prominent East African species. Then, we begin our exploration of the fascinating Serengeti National Park. To the Maasai, it is Siringutu, “the place where the land moves on forever.” Our tented camps here gives us an authentic taste of safari life, which the great H. M. Stanley extolled as “the sweet and novel pleasure of indifference to all things earthly outside camp, which is one of the most exquisite and soul-lulling pleasures a mortal can enjoy.”