tanzania.daressalaam

I actually don’t have much to say for once about how this trip came about. That should be obvious. A safari in Africa is the trip of a lifetime, especially for people like us that love nature and wildlife.

We’d been talking about it for a few years, and I’d already done the research to figure out where to go. I found an amazing website called safaribookings.com that had the perfect information to help us choose. It had a page on each country, the pros and cons, best times to visit, the weather, best parks, and the popular safari circuits. It didn’t take long to figure out that if you go to Africa once, you should go to northern Tanzania.

On a side note, I wish more travel websites were like safaribookings.com. It felt like it focused on helping you choose a safari destination first, and then also let you search various safari tour company offerings and book them.

Meanwhile, my mom met a random stranger out hiking one day that recommended going with GenSafaris. Most safari companies are just that – companies. But GenSafaris is one woman that’s been organizing personalized safaris for over 20 years. I was a little hesitant at first, going off of a stranger’s recommendation. But after browsing the website, it sounded awesome, and I didn’t want to bother shopping around.

These are the things I liked about GenSafaris:

  • Gennifer has extensive personal experience guiding and planning safaris
  • She’s with you the entire trip
  • She handpicks the drivers and local guides, and has worked with them so long that they are her friends.
  • She works with companies that support the local people and villages
  • The safari is designed to minimize stress on the animals and environment
  • We’ll have opportunities to learn about and experience the local people and cultures
  • The safari is not just to see wildlife, and put check marks on lists, but also to learn about the people, birds, plants, history, archaeology, and geology.

The biggest question was what time of year to go. The best times are in June-July to see the huge wildebeest migration, or Jan-Feb to see the wildebeest calving (i.e. babies!) and better birds (when migratory birds arrive from the northern hemisphere). We let our parents pick, and no surprise, they went for the better birds. And the next available slot, when we were all willing & able to cover the hefty price tag, was January 2018!

Route Map

This in an interactive custom Google Map where you can find all the hotels, restaurants, and sights referenced in the individual blogs. View it in full screen to access a list of all these places.

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