Southern Highlands Hidden Gems

Transfer 30–60 min
Karibu Tanzania! Your iTour Tanzania representative meets you at Julius Nyerere International Airport in Dar es Salaam with a name board and a warm welcome, and helps you with your luggage.

Transfer to your hotel (30–60 minutes, depending on traffic) through Tanzania's largest and liveliest city, a busy port on the Indian Ocean. Check in and relax after your journey, perhaps with a swim or a walk along the seafront.

In the evening, your guide or our representative gives you a short briefing about the journey ahead over dinner, and makes sure you have your domestic flight tickets and everything you need.

Meals: Dinner

Flight ~1 hr · Drive 30 min
After breakfast, transfer to the airport for your flight to Iringa (about 1 hour), flying over the coastal plains and the Udzungwa Mountains. Your driver-guide meets you on arrival.

Drive about 20 km to the Isimila Stone Age site, one of the most important in East Africa. Walk with a local guide among Stone Age hand axes and cleavers, and down into a gully of tall, eroded sandstone pillars.

Return to Iringa, a highland town on a hill above the Little Ruaha River, for lunch. In the afternoon, explore the town's colourful market and colonial-era buildings, and visit Neema Crafts, a social enterprise where people with disabilities make beautiful crafts and run a popular café. Overnight in Iringa.

Meals: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

Drive ~3 hrs
After breakfast, drive west towards Ruaha National Park, through farmland and baobab country. Stop at Kalenga, the former stronghold of Chief Mkwawa of the Hehe, who fought against German colonial forces in the 1890s. A small museum tells his story.

Arrive at Ruaha National Park after about 3 hours and continue to your camp for lunch.

In the late afternoon, enjoy your first game drive along the Great Ruaha River, where hippos and crocodiles gather and elephants come down to drink.

Meals: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

Full-day game drives
Today is a full day exploring Ruaha National Park. Leave early with a packed breakfast, as the cool morning is the best time to find predators. Ruaha is a vast wilderness of baobab-studded hills, open plains and sand rivers, and you share it with very few other vehicles.

Follow the Great Ruaha River and its sand-river tributaries, where elephants dig for water and herds of buffalo, giraffe, zebra and impala come to drink. Ruaha holds some of the largest lion prides in Africa, and leopard, cheetah and African wild dog are also seen. It is one of the few parks where you can see both greater and lesser kudu, as well as sable and roan antelope. Enjoy a picnic lunch in the shade of a baobab.

Return to camp in the late afternoon. Enjoy a sundowner overlooking the river, and dinner under the stars, listening to the sounds of the bush.

Meals: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

Drive ~3 hrs
Enjoy a final early morning game drive in Ruaha, when the light is soft and the predators are most active. Return to camp for breakfast.

Drive back to Iringa (about 3 hours) and check in to your hotel for lunch.

In the late afternoon, walk up Gangilonga Rock ('talking stone'), where Chief Mkwawa is said to have planned his battles, for sunset views over Iringa and the surrounding hills.

Meals: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

Drive ~2.5 hrs each way · Walks 2–3 hrs
Leave after an early breakfast and drive about 2.5 hours via Chimala and up a steep road with dozens of hairpin bends to the Kitulo Plateau, at around 2,600 m. Kitulo is Tanzania's first national park created mainly to protect plants, and is known locally as Bustani ya Mungu, 'the Garden of God'.

Spend the day walking on the plateau with a park guide. In the rainy season (December–April), the grassland bursts into colour with more than 350 plant species, including dozens of orchids, red-hot pokers, aloes, proteas and lilies. Keep an eye out for rare birds such as Denham's bustard, blue swallow and mountain marsh widowbird. Enjoy a picnic lunch on the plateau.

In the late afternoon, drive back down to Mbeya for the night.

Meals: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

Drive ~3.5 hrs with stops
After breakfast, drive south from Mbeya through the hills and tea estates around Tukuyu, on the slopes of Mount Rungwe, an extinct volcano.

Visit Daraja la Mungu ('God's Bridge'), a natural rock bridge over the Kiwira River formed from an ancient lava flow, and the Kaporogwe Falls, where you can walk behind the curtain of water into a large cave. Lunch along the way.

In the afternoon, descend from the cool highlands into the warm, green valleys of the Kyela district, and arrive at Matema Beach on the northern shore of Lake Nyasa (Lake Malawi), with the Livingstone Mountains rising straight out of the water. Watch the sunset from the beach.

Meals: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

Canoe ~1 hr each way
After breakfast, climb into a traditional dugout canoe with a local paddler and travel along the lakeshore, below the steep Livingstone Mountains, to Ikombe village, about an hour away.

In Ikombe, Kisi women make clay pots entirely by hand, without a potter's wheel, as their families have for generations. Watch them shape and fire the pots, and buy one directly from the makers. Paddle back to Matema for lunch.

Spend the afternoon swimming in the clear, fresh water of the lake, relaxing on the sand or walking to the Saturday market at Matema (if your visit coincides), where pottery and fish are traded.

Meals: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

Drive ~3 hrs · Flight to Dar ~1.5 hrs
Enjoy a final breakfast by the lake and a morning swim.

Drive back through Tukuyu to Songwe Airport near Mbeya, about 3 hours, for your flight to Dar es Salaam (about 1.5 hours). Connect with your international flight home, or continue to Zanzibar or Mafia Island for a beach extension. Kwaheri!

Meals: Breakfast

Overnight: End of tour