Serengeti Nationl Park

Tanzania occupies a special place in the hearts of old and new Africa hands. Its towns and cities are a little less bustling than Kenya’s, and its enchanting gamelands are fully Kenya’s equal in natural plenitude and beauty.

Obama’s safaris, whether private Custom or small group Classic Safaris, almost invariably pay their respects to Tanzania’s Serengeti, the southern half of the Serengeti-Maasai Mara ecosystem, the undisputed capital of the world’s animal kingdom. The Serengeti is amazing in its enormity, its almost infinite skies and long, golden reaches, its million-year quiet. It enraptures with moments of grace; we may well see, as Elspeth Huxley did: a “loping giraffe, like a tiger lily bending with dignity before a gusty breeze.” And then there’s the fabulous, animal-thronged Lost World of the Ngorongoro Crater, one of the world’s most magical places, where we especially (but hardly uniquely) appreciate something Isak Dinesen wrote, “The chief feature of the African landscape…was the air. Looking back on a sojourn in the African highlands, you are struck by the feeling of having lived for a time up in the air….You woke up in the morning and thought, Here I am, where I ought to be.”

Things we love about, and love to do in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area

Reveling in the world-uniqueness of the 100-square mile crater, standing on its grassy floor realizing that a couple of million years ago we’d be stuck in a fierce volcano with thousands of feet of rock over our heads.
Watching hippos galumph in waterholes, wondering, like Peter Matthiessen, how the huge beasts could have found their way into the crater.
Horsebacking and mountain biking on the crater’s lush slopes, based on the idyllic Manor at Ngorongoro, followed by a vitalizing swim in its pool.
Standing on the deck at Ngorongoro Sopa Lodge on the crater’s rim, looking 2,000 feet down at elephants ambling and beautifully designed zebras flowing across the acacia-dotted landscape.
Breathing in the pure air of the African highlands. “It went to my head like wine,” Isak Dinesen wrote, “I was all the time slightly drunk with it.”