Eleven days in the south

You land at Julius Nyerere International on the southern edge of Dar es Salaam and are met at the door. The city hotel is fifteen kilometres away, which in Dar traffic is anything from half an hour to an hour, and that is the only driving you do on this trip.

This night is here because the light-aircraft circuit to the southern parks leaves in the morning and does not wait for a delayed international flight. Arriving the evening before is the difference between a safari that starts on day 2 and one that starts on day 3 with a missed seat to explain.

Repack tonight into a soft bag. The aircraft you board tomorrow carries luggage in a pod under the wing, the weight limit is set by the airline rather than by us, and hard cases are refused at the check-in desk, not politely. The figure is 15 kilograms on most southern-circuit carriers; we confirm yours with the ticket.

The flight south-west from Dar takes about forty-five minutes and drops you at an airstrip in the northern sector of Nyerere National Park, the part of the old Selous Game Reserve that was gazetted as a national park in 2019. By road the same journey is 230 kilometres and most of a day; the aircraft buys you that day back and you spend it in the park.

Camp is on or near the Rufiji, the largest river in Tanzania, and the reason this park is on the itinerary at all. It runs through a network of oxbow lakes and channels lined with borassus palm, and in the dry season it is the only water for a long way south.

The first activity is by boat, in the late afternoon. Hippo in pods of thirty and forty, crocodile on every sandbank, and elephant coming down through the palms to drink at the hour the light goes orange. You see the bank from the water, which is a view a vehicle cannot give you anywhere in the north.

Walking is permitted in Nyerere with an armed park ranger, and the northern sector is the right ground for it: flat, open woodland between the lakes, with sight lines. You leave at first light and walk for two to three hours, slowly, and you will not cover more than six or seven kilometres.

What a walk gives you is everything the vehicle hides. Tracks in the sand and how old they are, the smell of a buffalo herd before you see it, dung beetles, the dry-season bird traffic at a shrinking pool. Large animals are seen at a distance and left there; that is the point of the ranger and the rule of the walk. The minimum age is sixteen, and it is not negotiable.

After lunch and the hot hours in camp, an afternoon game drive around the lake circuit. Nyerere holds one of the largest remaining wild dog populations in Africa, and the lakes are where they are most often found. They are not a promise on any given day. Lion, giraffe and large numbers of impala and waterbuck are.

A full day on the vehicle, working the chain of lakes — Tagalala, Manze, Nzerakera and the channels between them. In the dry season these are where the game concentrates and where the predators wait for it, and a morning spent moving slowly between them is the best game viewing in the northern sector.

Nyerere is one of the parks licensed for night drives; the Serengeti and the crater are not, which is one reason to come south. After dinner you go out for around two hours with a filtered spotlight. Genet, civet, bushbaby, porcupine and the eyes of things in the grass you cannot name until the guide does. Leopard is possible and not promised.

The night drive permit is a park fee on top of the entry fee and is included in the rate or charged separately — to confirm. The minimum age is normally sixteen, on insurance grounds rather than park rules, and the drive is quietly cold; bring a fleece.

The last full day in Nyerere is given to the river, because the boat is what this park does that Ruaha does not. A long morning outing downstream through the channels and into the open Rufiji, with breakfast taken on a sandbank if the crocodiles are somewhere else.

The birdlife on the water is the densest of the trip. African skimmers on the sand, fish eagles on every second dead tree, kingfishers of five species, carmine bee-eaters in their colonies in the cut banks from September. Bring binoculars even if you are not a birder; you will be one by lunch.

Upstream the river narrows into Stiegler’s Gorge, where the Julius Nyerere hydropower dam now stands. It is worth saying plainly: the dam has changed the river above the gorge, and the northern sector you are in sits below it. The boat does not go into the gorge. A late-afternoon drive or a second short boat trip closes the day, whichever the guide judges better for the light.

The hop west is the reason this itinerary exists. Nyerere and Ruaha are about 350 kilometres apart with the Udzungwa Mountains and a long day of bad road in between; the scheduled light-aircraft circuit does it in around an hour and a half, sometimes with a stop at another strip to pick up or drop other guests. It is a shared flight, not a charter, and the timing is the airline’s.

Ruaha is a different country. You climb from the Rufiji lowlands to a plateau at 750 to 1,000 metres, the palms give way to baobab and granite kopjes, and the air is drier. At around 20,000 square kilometres it is the largest national park in Tanzania and it sees a fraction of the visitors the Serengeti does.

The first camp is in the central part of the park, in reach of the Great Ruaha River and the sand rivers that feed it. The afternoon drive from the airstrip to camp is the introduction: elephant, giraffe, and the first greater kudu standing under a baobab, which is a sight the north cannot show you.

A full day on the river circuit, which in the dry months is where everything in central Ruaha ends up. The Great Ruaha drops to a chain of pools between July and October, and buffalo herds of several hundred come to them with lion following. Ruaha holds one of the largest lion populations of any park in Africa, and the prides here are big — fifteen and twenty animals is normal.

The other reason to spend a whole day here is the overlap. Ruaha is where the southern miombo woodland meets the East African acacia savannah, so greater and lesser kudu, sable and roan share ground with the impala and zebra you already know. Nowhere else on a Tanzanian route puts both lists in one drive.

Leopard is resident along the river and seen often enough to be worth looking for and not often enough to be promised. Cheetah are on the open ground to the south. Elephant are everywhere, in numbers that rival Tarangire, and noticeably more wary of vehicles; give them room.

Ruaha is big enough that one camp cannot cover it, which is why the four nights are split. Today is a transfer, but a transfer inside the park is a game drive with luggage, and the guide takes the long way. The road south-west leaves the river circuit for open miombo and the sand rivers of the park’s southern part.

This is the emptier ground. Vehicle numbers in central Ruaha are low by northern standards; down here on a dry-season morning you may see none. The trade is that game is more spread out and the sightings come from reading a sand river rather than following a radio.

The second camp sits on or near a sand river in the south or west of the park, and the change of ground is deliberate: cheetah on the open plains, wild dog denning in the woodland between June and August, and a walking option in the morning that the central circuit is too busy for.

A morning walk with an armed ranger, two to three hours along a sand river before the heat. Ruaha walking is different from the Rufiji: drier, more broken ground, and the animals are further off and warier. You will track rather than watch. Minimum age sixteen again.

The middle of the day is hot here in the dry months — 30 °C and more by noon — and the camp is the right place to be. The afternoon drive starts late, at four, and runs until the gate rules close it at dusk.

Then a night drive, permitted in Ruaha as in Nyerere, for the nocturnal animals the day hides: aardwolf, honey badger, serval on the open ground, and the lion prides on the move, which is when they actually hunt. The permit fee is to confirm and the drive is limited to around two hours by park rules.

A last drive in the cool of the morning on the way to the airstrip. The flight east to Dar takes around two hours, sometimes via another strip, and puts you on the coast by early afternoon; the change from 750 metres and dry heat to sea level and humidity is immediate.

The night in Dar is here for the same reason the first one was. Scheduled bush flights are late often enough that connecting them to an international departure the same evening is a gamble we will not take with your ticket. If your flight home leaves after midnight it can sometimes work; ask and we will say honestly.

The afternoon is free. The Msasani peninsula has the fish market and the craft market at Mwenge if you want them; a shower and a chair facing the Indian Ocean is the more common choice.