Tarangere or Mt Kilimanjaro park?

Chuck66

My wife and I will be doing the Kenya Tanzania tour this coming September. We've decided to arrive a day early at Arusha, and we were thinking of trying to get a personal game drive to Tarangere or Mt Kilimpark on Day 1 of the tour which looks to be the arrival and jet lag day. Anyone come early and if so what did you do?

AlanS

I think you will be overdoing it if you try to visit Tarangire National Park on Day 1. While there appears to be nothing scheduled on that day according to the itinerary, your TD will likely have a meeting that afternoon/evening to talk about the tour and tell what will be happening the next morning, etc. Google says it is almost a 3 hour drive to get there from Arusha (and another 3 hours back). If you spend 3 hours there, you will be gone for 9 hours. While it is theoretically possible, I really think you will be starting this active tour already tired, especially if your flight arrived late the previous evening. Our K&T TD said the animal viewing there is very good, however.

It is 2 hr. 34 min. from Arusha just to the western entrance of Mt. Kilimanjaro Park and 2 hr. 43 min. to the southern entrance. Again, I think you might be biting off too much.

You will spend almost 6 hours just in transit to Tarangire (over 5 hours to Kilimanjaro), assuming you can arrange for a vehicle, guide, and park entrance.

I suggest you investigate Arusha National Park. It is much closer, only an 1 hr. 30 min. to the S.E. entrance. Touring it can still make for a full day. You can make arrangements via the Lake Duluti Serena hotel for box lunches, safari vehicle, and driver/guide. The hotel often works with the outfitter Tauck uses- our safari vehicle was Tauck-branded and our driver/guide turned out to be one of our tour driver/guides. That is what we did. You will see just about all the animals you will see during your tour, just in smaller numbers. It really is a nice park. Check the K&T forum archives, there are plenty of threads about it.

British

Hello Chuck, I also think it is too far for you to go to Tarangire park in one day and just the day after you arrive. Jet lag should be factored in and the safari tours are quite tiring, not because of any exercise, because you get very little, but we find it tiring getting up every morning st about 5am. I would suggest getting up at a civilized time that first day in preparation for a vigorous but fabulous tour.
Alan is correct with his information. On both the K no T tour and the Tanzania Zanzibar tour there is an afternoon meeting the day before the tour officially starts with quite a lot of necessary information. The Tanzania Zanzibar tour used to go to Tarangire, so I have been, but not anymore, admittedly it is a lovely place. But I also suggest a tour of Arusha park, just a half hour drive from the hotel, it is a lovely taster safari and you will certainly see, giraffe, zebra, buffalo, baboons, no lions, rhinos, slight possibility of forest elegant, but lots of other animals and birds, even flamingoes on the lake.

AlanS

Flamingoes you say? At Arusha National Park in Tanzania?

Yup Both, 'Greater' and 'Lesser' flamingoes!

British

Lovely photos Alan, thanks for sharing. Hopefully you will get to see the Flamingoes on one of the Galápagos Islands, can't remember which one it was, but we were there in a March.