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The Mara river in the northern Serengeti. This is the photograph everyone wants and nobody can promise you
Tanzania — Everything We Know
“Safari then Zanzibar is the classic family shape and it exists for a good reason. Six days of five thirty alarms needs a beach at the end of it.”
We have not taken our five to Tanzania, so read this as advisor guidance and not as a memory. I will not write you a sentence about what the crater smelled like at dawn, because I have not stood in it.
What I can tell you is how the trips I plan actually go. Tanzania is the most expensive African country I sell and it is the one people are most likely to underbudget, because they price the lodges and forget the park fees, the crater fee, the charter flights and the concession levies, and then the quote comes in four thousand dollars higher than the number in their head.
So this page states the money plainly. It also tells you that Kilimanjaro is off the table for almost every family, that the Serengeti and Ngorongoro are two completely different experiences that people treat as one, and that ending on Zanzibar is not an indulgence. It is what makes the whole thing survivable for children.
Tanzania Place by Place
Eight places worth naming. A first family trip uses three. The northern circuit, then the island.
Serengeti
Ngorongoro
Zanzibar
Arusha
Tarangire
Kilimanjaro
Selous
Lake Manyara
Serengeti and Ngorongoro Are Not the Same Trip
People book them as a package and then discover they wanted very different amounts of each. Here is the difference.
The Serengeti is enormous and it takes time to reward you. Roughly the size of Connecticut. Grass to the horizon in every direction, which is genuinely overwhelming the first morning and slightly monotonous by the fourth. Three nights minimum, and choose your area by the month, because the herds move. The south for calving in January and February, the central Seronera for resident game year round, the north for the river crossings from July to October.
Ngorongoro is a collapsed volcano with a hundred square miles of floor and a wall around it. Around twenty five thousand large animals live inside, they mostly do not leave, and you descend into it in the morning and drive out in the afternoon. In two hours you can see lion, elephant, hippo, flamingo and the black rhino that are very hard to find anywhere else. For a child, it is the most reliably spectacular day in East Africa.
The crater is also busy and it is a day trip, not a stay. You cannot sleep on the crater floor. Lodges sit on the rim, which is at seven and a half thousand feet and cold, and every vehicle descends within the same two hour window. One full day is right. Two is not.
Tarangire is the one people cut and should not. An hour and a half from Arusha, baobabs everywhere, and the highest elephant density in the north in the dry season. It is cheaper, quieter and a gentler first safari day than being dropped straight into the Serengeti.
Tarangire in the dry season. The park everyone skips to get to the Serengeti faster, which is a mistake
The Zanzibar Finish Is the Classic Family Structure
Six days of dawn starts, dust, long drives and enormous excitement, then a ninety minute flight to an island in the Indian Ocean. It is the shape almost every good Tanzania family trip takes and I would build it that way nearly every time.
Where on the island matters a lot. The east coast, Paje and Jambiani, has enormous tides that pull the water half a mile out twice a day, which is fascinating and means you cannot just swim whenever you like. The north, Nungwi and Kendwa, has swimmable water at all tides and is where I put families with small children. The south east is quieter and more expensive.
Give Stone Town one night, not five. A UNESCO old town of coral stone, carved doors, a Persian and Omani and Indian and African history layered on top of itself, and an honest and difficult slave trade memorial. It is hot, dense and worth a day. Then move to the beach.
The spice farm tour is the best cheap thing to do with children here. Two hours, they smell and taste cloves, nutmeg, vanilla and cinnamon off the tree, somebody climbs a palm and cuts down a coconut. About fifteen dollars a head. It lands better than anything else on the island.
Zanzibar is majority Muslim and dress matters off the resort. Shoulders and knees covered in Stone Town and the villages. Swimwear is for the beach and the hotel only. It is a small courtesy and it changes how you are received.
Kilimanjaro Is Off the Table for Most Families
I want to be direct about this because people arrive assuming they will add it and the reality is not close.
The summit is 19,341 feet. A proper climb is six to eight days of camping, and the success rate drops sharply on the shorter routes because you have not acclimatised. The official minimum age is ten and most reputable operators will not take anyone under twelve, with plenty setting fourteen or sixteen. Altitude sickness is the reason and it is a real one. Children are harder to assess for it, because they under report symptoms and push on to please their parents. Cost is two to four thousand dollars per person.
If your children are teenagers and genuinely want it, it is one of the great things a family can do together. If they are ten and you are imagining a nice hike, please read that paragraph again.
What to do instead. A day walk on the lower slopes from Moshi through the coffee and banana farms of the Chagga villages, with a waterfall at the end. Half a day, a few hundred dollars for the family, and you get the mountain above you all afternoon. Or spend a night in Moshi purely to see it at dawn, because from the town it is close and enormous and it clears in the early morning before the cloud builds.
What It Costs, Honestly
East Africa is expensive and Tanzania is the most expensive of the two. Here are the numbers people are missing when they build a budget from lodge rates alone.
Park fees are per person per day
Serengeti runs around seventy dollars per adult per day, roughly twenty for a child, and camping or concession fees on top. Ngorongoro adds a conservation fee plus a vehicle fee for descending into the crater that is several hundred dollars for the car. For a family of four on a ten day northern circuit, fees alone are well over two thousand dollars before you have slept anywhere.
Lodges run five hundred to fifteen hundred per person per night
All inclusive with drives. Mobile tented camps that follow the migration sit at the higher end. A comfortable mid range family lodge is around six hundred. Budget camping safaris exist at a hundred and fifty and they are long days in a crowded vehicle.
Twenty to thirty thousand for a family of four
That is the honest all in range for ten to fourteen days done well, safari plus Zanzibar, excluding international flights. You can do it for less by driving instead of flying and using mid range lodges. You cannot do it for half.
If that number is out of reach, and it is out of reach for plenty of people including me at various points, South Africa delivers a genuine Big Five safari for roughly a third of it. That is not a consolation prize, it is a straightforwardly good trip, and I would rather tell you that than sell you something you have to strain for.
Food
Two Tanzanias on a plate. The mainland is maize, beans and grilled meat. Zanzibar is Indian Ocean trade, so coconut, cardamom, cloves and seafood, and it is a completely different cuisine. Two I could not photograph honestly and you should still find. Chipsi mayai is chips fried into an omelette, sold on every street, and it is the single most reliable thing to put in front of a tired child. Urojo is the Zanzibar mango soup, sour and crunchy and strange, sold at the night market in Stone Town.
Zanzibar after the bush. This is what six days of five thirty alarms buys you and it is not an indulgence
Getting Around
Driving the northern circuit is normal here, unlike in Kenya. Arusha to Tarangire to the crater to the Serengeti is a well worn route with a driver guide in a pop top Land Cruiser. The road is paved as far as Ngorongoro and rough after it. Arusha to the central Serengeti is a full eight hour day.
Fly at least one leg. The standard fix is to drive up, seeing Tarangire, Manyara and the crater on the way, and fly back from the Serengeti to Arusha or straight to Zanzibar. It saves a whole day of driving at the point where everyone is tired. Coastal Aviation and Auric Air run the routes with the same fifteen kilo soft bag rule as Kenya.
Your driver guide is the trip. Tanzanian guides are licensed and many are outstanding. You are with this person for eight hours a day for a week. Ask your operator for the guide’s name and experience before you pay the deposit, and tip them properly at the end, around twenty five dollars per guest per day.
To Zanzibar, fly rather than take the ferry. The ferry from Dar es Salaam is two hours and the sea is often rough. Flights from Arusha or the Serengeti go direct and cost little more than the drive to the port.
Money, Health and Practical Basics
US dollars run the tourist economy. Park fees, tips and lodge extras are quoted and often paid in dollars. Bring clean notes issued after 2009, because older ones are refused outright. Tanzanian shillings for local shops and markets. Cards work at lodges, rarely elsewhere.
Malaria prophylaxis is standard across the whole country including Zanzibar. There is no malaria free alternative in Tanzania. Yellow fever certificate is required if you are arriving from a risk country, and Zanzibar checks it more strictly than the mainland. See a travel clinic six weeks out and buy evacuation cover.
Visas are online in advance and Zanzibar has its own extra step. Apply for the e visa before you travel. Zanzibar now also requires a separate mandatory travel insurance policy bought through its own portal, which is inexpensive and which people routinely miss until check in.
Swahili is the national language and English is widely spoken in tourism. Jambo, asante, karibu. Teach the children those three and watch what happens. Swahili is genuinely easy to pronounce, which makes it a rewarding one for kids to try.
When to Go
January and February, the calving season
My pick for families. Half a million wildebeest calves are born in the southern Serengeti in about three weeks, and the predator action that follows is extraordinary. Dry, warm, and far cheaper than July. Zanzibar is at its best in the same window.
June to October, dry season and the crossings
The classic window. Best general game viewing, the river crossings in the north from July, and the highest prices of the year. Book a year ahead for August.
March to May is the long rains
Avoid it with children. Many camps close in April and May, roads in the Serengeti become impassable, and Zanzibar gets genuinely heavy rain. November’s short rains are much milder and the discounts are real.
Doing It With Children
Six or seven is the floor, and Tanzania asks more of a child than South Africa does. The driving days are long, the roads are corrugated, and the distances are real. From eight up it works beautifully. Under six, do South Africa instead and come here when they are older.
Camp minimum ages apply here too. Same as Kenya. Many camps set six, eight or twelve, and a private vehicle usually unlocks the exception. Ask before you fall in love with a photograph. Family tents with interconnecting rooms exist at most of the good lodges and are worth asking for by name.
Pack for eight hours in a vehicle, not for a nature documentary. Downloaded films, a card game, snacks, a proper hat, wet wipes, and something to catch travel sickness. The corrugated road out of Ngorongoro to the Serengeti is the one that gets people.
Break up the driving with things that are not animals. A Maasai boma visit, a coffee farm outside Arusha, the Cultural Heritage Centre, the spice farm on Zanzibar. Children need the change of texture more than adults do and every one of these is a good hour.
Who Tanzania Suits, and Who Should Skip It
Go if your children are eight or older, the budget is genuinely there, and you want the biggest version of a safari that exists. Go if the Ngorongoro crater and the Serengeti are the images in your head, because nothing else substitutes for them. Go if you want a real beach week attached to the wildlife week, because Zanzibar is a much better beach than Kenya’s coast.
Skip it if the budget is tight, because Tanzania punishes a strained budget more than most countries and a cheap safari here is a genuinely poor experience. Skip it if your children are under six. Skip March through May. Skip Kilimanjaro unless you have teenagers who have asked for it by name. And skip trying to do the northern circuit in under seven days, because you will spend most of it looking at the inside of a Land Cruiser.
Compared to its neighbours, Kenya is the easier and cheaper version of the same ecosystem, with shorter internal flights and the conservancy model that gives families private vehicles and walking. Tanzania is bigger, emptier, more expensive and has the two sights that Kenya cannot match. South Africa is a third of the price, malaria free if you choose it well, and the right answer for younger children. If this is your first safari and money is a factor, start there. If this is the trip you have been saving for, come here.
Things That Surprise First Timers
The Ngorongoro rim is cold. Seven and a half thousand feet, often in cloud, and lodges have fireplaces for a reason. People pack for equatorial Africa and shiver through dinner.
Maasai people live inside the conservation area. Ngorongoro is not a fenced park emptied of humans. Maasai families graze cattle on the crater floor alongside the lions, as they have for generations, and you will drive past them. It complicates the picture children have of a nature reserve in a way that is worth talking about.
Zanzibar tides move half a mile. On the east coast the ocean simply leaves for a few hours, and people who booked a beach holiday find themselves looking at wet sand and seaweed farmers. Check the coast before you book, not after.
The Serengeti is emptier than the documentaries suggest. Long stretches of grass with nothing in them. That is what makes it real, and it is also why three nights beats one and why a good guide is worth more than a good lodge.
Pairs Well With
The same ecosystem across a border. Nairobi to Kilimanjaro airport is under an hour and plenty of operators run the combination. Give it two weeks or do not bother.
Not a combination so much as an alternative. If the cost of Tanzania is the thing stopping you, read that page and then decide.
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