Tanzania has whatever you are dreaming about - be it tropical islands, climbing the highest mountain in Africa, diving for marine treasures or watching the annual migration of plains game. There is something for everyone: from the most hard bitten adventurer to the most discerning connoisseur of food and wine.
It is inherently a wild and adventurous area that has only been partly tamed by man, its development apparent in its vibrant cities and charming towns, its primitive origins still evident in its rugged peaks and sprawling savannah and desert lands. Travel to Tanzania for extraordinary encounters with its exceptional wildlife on a safari not to be forgotten any time soon. Alternatively, travel to Tanzania to get away from it all and enjoy spectacular, uncrowded powder–white sandy beaches. Or, why not spice the journey with some culture? Discover one of the world’s last unique and unspoiled continents.
The idyllic islands adrift in the Indian Ocean, on the other hand, are just waiting for the chance to seduce elegant travelers with their warm waters, colorful spice markets and a unique style of barefoot luxury… In general, the style of the Indian Ocean is that of relaxed simplicity with several, truly stylish hotels built from nothing but palm, wood and thatch. Where shoes can be forgotten and computers are a myth.
Not only is it the largest Game reserve in Africa, or the fact that it is a World Heritage Site; but few parks in Tanzania or southern Africa for that matter can offer the same quality or intensity of grass roots safari as the Selous Game Reserve. This is a wild country; full of wild animals where you can walk, game-drive and take river safaris. With its rivers, plains and lakes, the Selous is somewhere you get a powerful sense of the scale of the African wilderness. There is Wonderful river line wilderness, offering a variety of an experience, with vehicle, boat and foot safaris. The Selous does not welcome guests with great vistas of volcanoes and forested mountain slopes. Its landscape is flat, with a few distant hills on the horizons. But what a flatness! Its rivers do not cascade through ravines, but glide and wind their way like septuagenarians through a maze of oxbows lakes and mbuga swamps. Even at Steigler's Gorge, where the Great Rufiji is confined within a narrow granite channel.
The Selous is a gentle place, whose pace is slowed by the languid heat and humidity of the coastal region. Safari here is a slow-paced, relaxed affair, of short morning walks, long lunches and late afternoons spent bird watching from the boat. It is the kind of place where people enjoy dosing off to the sound of a fish eagle as much as they do chasing around the bush in search of big game.
This is what makes the Selous a special place, especially when you compare it with the typical race around the Northern Parks of Tanzania. But don't go comparing the two safaris like for like ... the north is far more adventurous and has much more visible game, whilst the south is far more intimate, relaxed, discrete and gentle.