Msoberman

One of the highlights of the entire trip was taking a short boat ride to a small fishing village. Unchanged for hundreds of years, they had only recently begun receiving visitors from Lupita Island. They were very friendly, especially the children, who immediately swarmed us. Begging for money? No! They were fascinated with our digital cameras. We spent a good hour taking dozens of photos of them, then showing them on their camera screen. They just couldn’t get enough of this! I showed them pictures of animals from the Serengeti and they would call out their names in Swahili. They knew them all! Then our liaison brought out a soccer ball and they went nuts, running around the village, kicking around the ball.It was so much fun to wa... read more

The next morning we left the Serengeti for Lupita Island on Lake Tanganyika in western Tanzania. It would be a three-hour flight from Seronera to the airstrip at Kipili. We really hated to leave the Serengeti, especially since we never found a black rhino, or even a white one, but we looked forward to relaxing in luxury at Lupita. We flew for over an hour, then stopped to refuel in Tabora.Once we landed at Kipili, we had a ten-minute walk to the shore, then a ten-minute boat ride across to the island. Remote, private and exclusive, the resort at Lupita Island was truly amazing. All open-air African style with a bar, dining room, pool area, campfire, spa, gym, game room and decks for taking in the beautiful lake views. Each area was decorated with local African ... read more

We took a 30-minute chartered flight from Manyara to Seronera, then got into some even nicer jeeps and headed out for our first Serengeti game drive on the way to our camp. Some highlights included seeing a female leopard sharing her kill in a tree with her cubs, a cheetah with a kill, giraffes, elephants, a secretary bird, some hippos, and my favorite, the adorable little Thomson gazelles with their sporty racing stripes and flapping little tails as if they are so happy to see us. Seeing my first giraffe in the landscape, stepping back from an acacia tree, was really special. They are so beautiful. Then we stopped and we were suddenly 15 feet from a lion. It really unnerved me. I couldn’t understand why no one else was alarmed, but then it was explained ... read more

My husband and I are members of Exclusive Resorts, and we participated in their Once-in-a-Lifetime trip to Tanzania in June 2011. It was a nine-day itinerary and our first time to Africa, and it was the most amazing experience. The company that operated the tour, Tanzania by Firelight (www.firelightexpeditions.com) is based in Arusha and is owned by a native Tanzanian and his wife. Their properties include a luxury mobile camp in the Serengeti, Mwanga Moto, which is repositioned several times each year in pursuit of the Great Migration. They also have a permanent luxury camp, Palahala Lodge in Katavi National Park, which we did not visit on this trip. And the jewel in the crown is their stunning resort on a private island, Lupita Island on Lake Tanganyika. We had planned to arrive a day ea ... read more