Visit Southern Tanzania, Tanzania

Southern Tanzania is vast and wild and has two large parks: Nyerere National Park and Ruaha National Park.

It has two smaller parks as well, the Udzungwa Mountains and Mikumi National Park, but all of these parks receive a fraction of the visitors that their counterparts in the north do and offer untouched wilderness and an exciting safari experience.

Nyerere National Park

Nyerere National Park is one of the largest reserves in Africa and has beautiful wetland scenery with abundant hippo, crocodile and birdlife. It has Africa’s highest population of wild dog and buffalo as well as lion, elephant, leopard and giraffe.

Ruaha National Park

Ruaha is good for large predators, elephant herds and localized antelope species such as sable, roan and greater and lesser kudu. In the dry season Ruaha has some of the best game viewing Africa has to offer.

Nyerere and Ruaha are always accessed by light aircraft and combine well on a week long fly-in safari. The two smaller parks of Mikumi and Udzungwa are smaller and only accessible on a guided 4x4 safari.

Mikumi National Park and Udzungwa Mountains

Mikumi is a good place to stop for a couple of nights at the start of your safari and is very family friendly. The Udzungwa Mountains are a place for keen walkers with steep trails leading up the mountains to waterfalls and lookout points. A large number of the animals are endemic with Sanje crested mangabeys, uhehe red colobus and Matunda galagos of particular interest.