Trip ideas 3 min read
A first trip to Africa in ten days: three combinations that work
Ten days are enough, if you don’t try to see everything. Three different ways to use them, and who each one is designed for.
Weltweg editorial team
In this article5 sections
The most common question from first-time travellers is how many places they can see in ten days. It is the wrong question. Between flights, transfers and hours on the road, ten days on the ground can sustain two different environments, three at most. Well chosen, they make a great journey; piled up, they become one long transfer.
1. Northern Tanzania and Zanzibar
For those who want the classic safari and a few days by the sea, children included. How: six days between Tarangire, Ngorongoro and the Serengeti, then an internal flight of about an hour to Zanzibar and three or four nights on the coast. It is the most tried-and-tested combination, and for that reason the easiest to get right. In our catalogue it starts from €5,050 per person, flights included.
2. Kenya: the Masai Mara and a second environment
For those who want wildlife at the centre and accept a trip that is more safari than beach. How: four or five nights in the Masai Mara, ideally in a conservancy, and a second area with a different landscape, such as Amboseli with Kilimanjaro on the horizon. Between July and October it is the version that puts the Great Migration centre stage.
3. Self-drive Namibia
For those who love driving, empty spaces and landscape photography. How: a loop that starts in Windhoek, heads down into the Namib Desert for Sossusvlei, climbs back towards the Atlantic coast and finishes at Etosha. Ten days is the minimum: the distances are long and the roads largely unsealed. It is not a guided safari in a 4x4; it is a road trip with wildlife as the finale.
How to choose
If the priority is wildlife with a measure of comfort and the sea, the first. If it is wildlife and nothing else, the second. If you care more about landscape than a list of sightings, the third. In all three cases the time of year shapes the trip as much as the destination.
What to leave out
Madagascar in ten days alongside a safari, Victoria Falls tacked on to a trip to Tanzania, three parks in three days. It can be done, but you spend more time in transit than in the journey itself. Better to save them for the second trip, which, for those who have made the first, almost always comes.
