Best Of Explore Africa Vacations
Welcome to Explore Africa Vacations, a locally owned tour operator in East Africa with deep roots and expert knowledge across Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. We are passionate about crafting bespoke African safaris that go beyond the ordinary, guided by expert safari guides and built around the destinations and experiences that matter most to you.
From gorilla trekking trips in Uganda's Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, which holds half of the remaining mountain gorilla population and Luxury gorilla safaris in Rwanda's Volcanoes National Park, to Big Five wildlife safaris in Kenya's Maasai Mara National Reserve, the Great Wildebeest Migration across Tanzania’s Serengeti National Park, chimpanzee tracking in Kibale Forest National Park, and Congo safari adventures including a hike on the Nyiragongo volcano, we bring East Africa's most iconic wildlife encounters to life for travelers from across the world.
Whether you are planning a luxury honeymoon safari, a family Africa vacation, a group safari, a solo bucket-list adventure, or your first-ever wildlife safari in Africa, our experienced team creates customized Africa vacation packages tailored to your interests, travel dates, and budget. Every itinerary is crafted by tour consultants who know these landscapes intimately because this is their home. Browse some of our safari packages below, or contact us today to begin planning your East Africa adventure by sending an inquiry. We shall respond to you as soon as possible.
Best Gorilla Trekking Safaris 2026 / 2027
Best Gorilla Trekking Experiences
Gorilla Trekking in Africa is done only in East Africa and that being in Uganda, Congo & Rwanda. One of the top selling Gorilla trekking safaris is the 8 Days Uganda Safari in Uganda which includes a games drive to Murchison Falls National Park, a tour to chimpanzee tracking in Kibale National Park, a walk in the Bigodi Wetlands & a tour of Queen Elizabeth National Park & then transfer to Bwindi Impenetrable National Park for gorilla trekking experience. View Package
18 Days Best of East Africa Safari
Explore Africa Vacations brings you one of the most amazing packages that lets you experience the best of East Africa. In this safari package you get to experience Gorilla Trekking, Chimpanzee Tracking and Wildlife Safaris in Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya & Tanzania. Some of the places you will visit inclcude: Murchison Falls National Park, Kibale National Park, Queen Elizabeth & Bwindi Impenetrable in Uganda; Volcanoes in Rwanda; Serengeti in Tanzania & Masai Mara in Kenya. View PackageEast Africa Safaris
- The Virunga Classic Package
- The Virunga Expedition Package
- The Great Ape
- Rutshuru Expedition
- Le Petit Virunga (Bukima)
- Le Petit Virunga (Mikeno)
- Mikeno Mist Package
- Nyiragongo Volcano Trek
- Great Ape with Nyiragongo Hike
- 3 Days Virunga Gorilla Trekking
- 3 Days Congo Gorilla Trekking
- 8 Days Virunga, PNV & Bwindi
Rwanda Safari Packages
- 1 Day Rwanda Golden Monkey trekking Tour
- 2 Days Rwanda Gorilla Tour
- 3 Days Akagera National Park
- 3 Days Nyungwe Chimpanzee Trekking
- 5 Days Gorilla Trekking and Hiking Safari
Uganda Safari Packages
- 1 Day Kibale National Park Safari
- 2 Days Lake Mburo Safari
- 3 Days Queen Elizabeth Safari
- 3 Days Bwindi Gorilla Trekking Tour
- 3 Days Murchison Falls Park Safari
- 5 Days Uganda Primates Safari
- 6 days fly in Gorilla habituation & Chimpanzee trekking safari
- 8 Days Uganda Safari Tour
- 8 Days Uganda Luxury Safari
- 10 Days Uganda Safari
Unique Natural Wonders in East Africa
East Africa is surrounded by unique geographical features and some of the most beautiful sights in the whole world of nature. Some of the natural features include mountain ranges and savannah country, lakes and rift valleys, the East African region is home to so many sights that people from different Region in the world come to adventure.
It would be unfair to visit East Africa without taking a shot at the tallest mountain in Africa, Mount Kilimanjaro. On the border of Kenya and Tanzania in northern Tanzania Kilimanjaro stands at 19,341 feet or 5,895 meters above sea level. They stand out in a sea of grasslands and forests, some of them permanently capped by winter’s snow and ice. Hiking to the top to watch the development of the new day above the clouds is one of the great physical activities. However, even if your journey is partial up the slopes, you will get to see unbelievable sceneries and interesting natural features such as the alpine land with hard and cut-short vegetation, montane and high tropical humid forests known as ‘the cloud forests.’
One of East Africa’s more distinctive geographical features is the Great Rift Valley. This is a gigantic failure line that runs through Asia from Jordan to Mozambique in Southeastern Africa and particularly shows its size in Kenya. The best views of the Great Rift Valley are obtained from lookout towers over Hell’s Gate National Park. This lighting will enable you to look out on to cliffs that dispense towering heights, gorge formations etched by early Lakes and other monumental scenes that appear to tell you the history of the entire earth in thousands of years condensed into one view. It is ideal to get to the location early in the morning during golden hour since the colors are golden.
Northern Tanzania is once more endowed with another beautiful park; the Serengeti national park. Renown for the Great Migration where the world’s largest herd of migratory wildebeest, zebra and their calves, set off in a seemingly unending ocean of them in their follow in search of water and fresh grazing grounds in the Serengeti plains this park is East Africa’s No 1 safari destination. Another of the geologic attractions of the park is the peculiar Soit Lemekwa crater. This shallow and geomorphologically symmetrical crater for rains constitutes a kind of an oasis amidst steppe-like region. It is lined with acacia trees and often patrons by Wildlife for water and gives an astonishing experience to those on a safari looking for something other than the standard tour.
However, I would like to mention the Ngorongoro Crater in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area in Tanzania as the greatest example of East Africa’s geography. Loliondo Game Control Area is the world’s largest intact volcanic caldera natural fenced enclosed area with over 25,000 wild animals. Safari is another wonderful experience though a 610 meters descent to the crater floor; a ten-hour drive which returns marvelous fresh vistas of grasslands, swamps and forests housing lions and prides of hyenas, elusive black rhinos and many others. It is equally referred to as Africa’s Eden in relation to the superb scenic beauty and density of animals.
Coastal plains to snowcapped mountains, to red rising sun at rift valley cliffs to infinity of great plains of savannah, East African’s has treasures of some of the most amazing geological magical wonders for explorations. First-timers and old-handed people alike can expect to see more of what the region has to offer in terms of stunning and spectacular wildlife destinations. Simply let these marvels of nature bring out creativity and the sense of adventure in you within the vast expanse of the latter.
TOP East African Destinations
Explore Africa Vacations presents exceptional East African vacations across some of the continent’s most captivating destinations. Our safaris combine iconic Africa safaris, immersive cultural experiences, and breathtaking landscapes, offering travelers a deeper connection to Africa. Each destination below highlights the defining attractions that make East Africa a world-class safari and holiday region.
TANZANIA NATIONAL PARK SAFARI GUIDE
Tanzania protects more wildlife land than any other African nation, anchored by two iconic destinations: Serengeti National Park and Ngorongoro Crater. The Serengeti's 14,763 square kilometres of open savannah supports the world's greatest concentration of plains game, including 3,000 lions and the largest cheetah population on Earth. The legendary Great Wildebeest Migration moves through the ecosystem year-round, from dramatic calving season predator hunts on the southern plains to the iconic Mara River crocodile crossings, making Tanzania safari game drives unmissable for wildlife photography and Big Five sightings.
The Ngorongoro Crater, a collapsed volcanic caldera sheltering roughly 25,000 large mammals, consistently delivers full Big Five sightings on a single crater floor game drive, including the rare black rhino. The surrounding Ngorongoro Conservation Area also protects Olduvai Gorge, where 1.8-million-year-old hominid fossils establish this as the world's most significant palaeontological site. Tarangire National Park completes the Northern Circuit safari experience, drawing Africa's largest elephant herds to the Tarangire River alongside tree-climbing lions, ancient baobabs, and 550-plus bird species. Tanzania's remote Southern Circuit offers an entirely different, crowd-free safari experience built for serious wildlife travellers. Nyerere National Park's Rufiji River boat safaris and Ruaha National Park's untouched wilderness, home to Africa's most significant lion and wild dog populations, represent the continent's most adventurous bush experiences. A Tanzania and Zanzibar safari combination, closing with white-sand Indian Ocean beaches, remains East Africa's most sought-after travel itinerary worldwide.KENYA NATIONAL PARK SAFARI GUIDE
Kenya is the birthplace of the modern African safari, and the Maasai Mara National Reserve remains East Africa's most celebrated wildlife destination, 1,500 square kilometres of open grassland supporting the highest densities of lion, leopard, cheetah, and elephant in the region. Between July and October, over two million wildebeest, zebra, and gazelle surge north from Tanzania's Serengeti in the Great Wildebeest Migration, making the Mara River crossings the world's most sought-after wildlife spectacle. Hot air balloon safaris over the Maasai Mara at dawn and Amboseli National Park game drives, where elephant herds roam beneath Mount Kilimanjaro's snow-capped summit, complete Kenya's most iconic Big Five safari experiences.
The park, Lake Nakuru National Park, in the Great Rift Valley delivers flamingo-fringed soda lake scenery alongside one of East Africa's most reliable black and white rhino concentrations, while nearby Hell's Gate National Park offers a uniquely active cycling safari through a geothermal gorge. Tsavo East and Tsavo West national parks together form Kenya's largest protected wilderness, ancient lava landscapes, the Galana River, and enormous elephant herds roaming genuinely remote thornbush terrain, with Mzima Springs offering rare underwater hippo and crocodile viewing. Samburu National Reserve in Kenya's arid north is home to the exclusive Samburu Special Five; reticulated giraffe, Grevy's zebra, gerenuk, Somali ostrich, and Beisa oryx, found nowhere else in Kenya, alongside resident lion, leopard, and elephant. The Laikipia Plateau's network of private conservancies represents Africa's most forward-thinking conservation model, offering night game drives, horseback safaris, Maasai-guided walking safaris, and rare wild dog sightings. Combining the Maasai Mara circuit with Kenya's northern reserves creates one of East Africa's most rewarding and diverse Kenya wildlife safari itineraries.UGANDA NATIONAL PARK SAFARI GUIDE
Uganda is East Africa's most complete safari destination, and no country on the continent rivals the sheer variety of wildlife encounters available within a single itinerary and Bwindi Impenetrable National Park; a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is its crown jewel, sheltering almost half the world's remaining mountain gorillas across four trekking trailheads. Uganda mountain gorilla trekking delivers a single permitted hour with a habituated gorilla family, while Rushaga's gorilla habituation experience extends that encounter to four hours, the most intimate primate Uganda safari experience available anywhere in Africa. Bwindi's ancient rainforest also records over 350 bird species, making it a world-class Uganda birding safari destination alongside its primate encounters.
The park, Kibale National Park, holds Africa's densest chimpanzee population, and chimpanzee tracking through its cathedral-like forest is one of Uganda's most rewarding wildlife experiences, complemented by red colobus monkey sightings in the Bigodi Wetland Sanctuary. Queen Elizabeth National Park combines open savannah game drives, the famous tree-climbing lions of the Ishasha sector, and the Kazinga Channel boat cruise, delivering over 600 bird species and some of Africa's most densely packed hippo and crocodile viewing. Murchison Falls National Park, Uganda's largest protected area, is built around the Nile forcing through a 7-metre rock cleft, the world's most powerful waterfall, with lion, elephant, giraffe, and shoebill stork sightings on game drives and extraordinary hippo and crocodile encounters on Nile boat cruises. The park, Kidepo Valley National Park, Uganda's most remote wilderness on the South Sudan border, offers genuinely private game drives across semi-arid landscapes supporting lion, cheetah, ostrich, and rare species absent from Uganda's other parks. Rwenzori Mountains National Park adds multi-day glacier trekking through Afro-alpine moorland on Africa's third-highest massif for adventure-focused travellers. Uganda safari tours combining gorilla trekking, chimpanzee tracking, Big Five game drives, and Nile boat cruises deliver East Africa's most varied and underrated wildlife itinerary.RWANDA NATIONAL PARK SAFARI GUIDE
Rwanda is the world's most celebrated and most efficiently organised gorilla trekking destination, combining extraordinary wildlife with remarkable accessibility and a deeply moving cultural heritage. And Volcanoes National Park is its centrepiece, mist-draped volcanic peaks sheltering six habituated mountain gorilla families across bamboo forest and Hagenia woodland on the Virunga massif. Rwanda mountain gorilla trekking assigns groups of eight to a specific gorilla family each morning, with treks culminating in one hour of extraordinary close observation, while golden monkey tracking and summit hikes on Mount Karisimbi at 4,507 metres add depth to any Volcanoes National Park itinerary. Rwanda gorilla trekking permits should be booked at least six months in advance given consistently high demand year-round.
The park, Nyungwe Forest National Park, in the southwest is one of Africa's oldest and most biodiverse montane rainforests, estimated at over 30 million years old, sheltering thirteen primate species including habituated chimpanzees and Angola colobus troops exceeding 400 individuals. Nyungwe's celebrated 200-metre canopy walkway, suspended sixty metres above an unbroken forest canopy, delivers one of East Africa's most distinctive and vertiginous wildlife experiences. Akagera National Park on Rwanda's eastern border completes the country's safari circuit with its only Big Five experience: lion, leopard, elephant, rhino, and buffalo, alongside exceptional boat safaris on Lake Ihema for birding, hippo, and Nile crocodile encounters. Rwanda rewards immersive travel beyond its wildlife, with the Iby'iwacu Cultural Village offering meaningful community context alongside gorilla safari itineraries, and Kigali's Genocide Memorial and emerging food scene justifying a full city day. Combined Rwanda and Uganda gorilla safari itineraries deliver the definitive mountain gorilla experience on Earth across two ecosystems and multiple habituated gorilla families. Rwanda's compact geography, world-class infrastructure, and extraordinary wildlife density make it East Africa's most efficiently experienced safari destination.CONGO NATIONAL PARK SAFARI GUIDE
The Democratic Republic of Congo is East Africa's most adventurous safari destination, and Virunga National Park; Africa's oldest national park, designated in 1925 and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is its extraordinary centrepiece, sheltering more mammal and bird species than any comparably sized protected area on the continent. Virunga gorilla trekking is the park's headline experience, uniquely offering encounters with both mountain gorillas in the Mikeno sector and lowland Congo gorilla families in the north, making it the only national park on Earth where both gorilla subspecies can be tracked in a single visit. Deliberately small group sizes give Congo gorilla trekking a quality of genuine wilderness intimacy increasingly difficult to find in more visited destinations like Bwindi or Volcanoes national parks.
Mount Nyiragongo, an active stratovolcano rising to 3,470 metres, holds one of the world's largest persistent lava lakes, visible from 50 kilometres away and the Nyiragongo overnight hike through bamboo forest and open lava fields to the crater rim is the most geologically dramatic wildlife experience in East Africa. Trekkers camp in metal summit huts watching the lava lake churn below them through the night, before a two-hour descent the following morning. No other East Africa safari activity combines physical challenge, volcanic spectacle, and raw natural drama in the same way. Virunga also protects the rare okapi, forest elephants, chimpanzees, and over 700 bird species including Albertine Rift endemics, while Kahuzi-Biega National Park four hours south shelters the world's largest Eastern lowland gorilla population; Grauer's gorillas, the largest gorilla subspecies. Congo safari itineraries require careful advance planning and current security verification before booking, though the Virunga Foundation's professional conservation programme makes sustainable tourism increasingly viable. For travellers willing to make the journey, the DRC delivers Africa's most extraordinary and least explored Congo tour experience.BURUNDI NATIONAL PARK SAFARI GUIDE
Burundi is East Africa's most unexplored safari destination; a steeply terraced nation of forested highlands and river valleys anchored by the western shore of Lake Tanganyika, one of the world's oldest, deepest, and most biodiverse freshwater lakes. Kibira National Park in the north protects the Great Lakes region's largest continuous tract of montane rainforest, where Burundi chimpanzee trekking follows habituated communities through ancient, lichen-draped forest alongside colobus monkeys, olive baboons, and over 200 recorded bird species. For travellers who have explored Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya, and Tanzania, Burundi delivers the authentic, crowd-free layer of East Africa that most visitors never reach.
Lake Tanganyika, 676 kilometres long, 1,470 metres deep, and up to 12 million years old, is Burundi's most extraordinary natural asset, harbouring over 350 endemic cichlid species found nowhere else on Earth. The crystal-clear Burundian shoreline around Bujumbura and Rumonge offers Africa's finest freshwater snorkelling and diving, with 20-metre visibility over endemic cichlid-rich rocky substrates, alongside resident hippos, Nile otters, and enormous Nile crocodiles. Rusizi National Park at the lake's northern tip delivers outstanding East Africa birding safari experiences, with boat safaris on the Rusizi River revealing hippo pods, sitatunga antelope, crocodiles, and exceptional waterbird diversity in complete tranquillity. Ruvubu National Park, Burundi's largest protected area, follows the meandering Ruvubu River through open savannah and riverine forest supporting buffalo, waterbuck, hippos, and over 400 bird species on guided riverside walks. Community-based tourism along the Lake Tanganyika shore and around Kibira connects visitors directly with local fishing villages whose way of life has remained largely unchanged for generations. A Burundi nature tour woven into a broader East Africa safari itinerary, ideally combined with Uganda or Rwanda, delivers the most authentic, unhurried, and genuinely undiscovered wildlife travel experience remaining in Africa.




