A national park on the doorstep, a crater lake, coffee farms, the markets and Mount Meru. The best ways to spend a day or a half day in Arusha before or after a safari.
Arusha is where most safaris start. It sits at about 1,400 metres under Mount Meru, an hour from Kilimanjaro International Airport, and most people spend a night here before the parks and sometimes one after. That night does not have to be a wasted one. The city has a national park on its doorstep, a crater lake, coffee farms, a market that sells everything, and a view of Meru from almost every street.
This page lists the best things to do with a day or a half day in Arusha. Everything here can be arranged as a day trip or added to the start or end of a safari. Ask us when you enquire.
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Forty minutes from the city is a park most safari-goers drive past. Arusha National Park is small, about 550 square kilometres, and it packs in three different landscapes.
The Ngurdoto Crater is a small, steep-sided caldera with a swampy floor where buffalo graze. You look down from the rim. The Momella Lakes are a string of shallow alkaline lakes, each a different colour, with flamingos, hippos and waterbuck. And Mount Meru rises above it all, with forest on its lower slopes where black and white colobus monkeys live.
You can do things here you cannot do in the big parks. Walking safaris with an armed ranger go through the forest and onto the open ground below Meru. Canoe trips cross the Momella lakes. Giraffe and buffalo are close, and the atmosphere is calm.
A half day covers the crater and the lakes. A full day adds a walk. It is the best use of a spare day in Arusha and the best warm-up before the northern circuit.
The Cultural Heritage Centre on the Dodoma road is part gallery, part shop, part museum. The main building holds one of the largest collections of African art on the continent, with a spiral gallery of paintings and sculpture from across the region. The shops sell carvings, tanzanite, fabrics and books. Prices are fixed and higher than the markets. Allow an hour or two.
The Maasai Market in the city centre is the opposite. Dozens of stalls sell beadwork, carvings, paintings and kangas, and every price is a negotiation. Go with a guide the first time. It is friendly and busy, and a little overwhelming.
The central market is where the city shops. Fruit, vegetables, spices, grain, fabric and household goods, in a covered hall and the streets around it. It is a good place to see what ordinary life in Arusha looks like. Keep valuables close and let a local show you round.
The slopes around Arusha are coffee country. Several farms on the edge of the city offer tours that walk you through the plantation and the process, from picking the cherries to roasting the beans over a fire. You drink the result at the end. A tour takes two to three hours, and many are run by the farming families themselves.
Lake Duluti is a small crater lake about 15 kilometres east of the city, ringed by forest. A path runs round it, about an hour on foot, with monitor lizards on the banks and fish eagles overhead. Canoes can be hired to paddle across. It is peaceful and close, and a good afternoon after a morning of errands.
The two combine well. A coffee tour in the morning and Duluti in the afternoon is a full, gentle day with almost no driving.
Cultural tourism around Arusha is organised through village programmes that keep the money in the community. The best-known are on the slopes of Meru.
Ilkiding'a and Mulala are Wa-Arusha and Wa-Meru villages where a local guide walks you through the farms, a traditional healer's compound and a school, with lunch in a family home.
Ng'iresi, above the city, has a walk through terraced farms and forest to a viewpoint over Arusha and, on a clear day, Kilimanjaro.
Longido, north of the city on the Namanga road, is a Maasai community with walks across the plains and a weekly cattle market.
These are not shows. They are ordinary villages that have chosen to welcome visitors, and the money you pay makes it worthwhile for them. A visit takes half a day or a full day. Ask us to build one in.
Mount Meru is the fifth highest mountain in Africa at 4,566 metres, and it stands directly over Arusha. Most people only look at it. It deserves more than that.
The climb takes three or four days, through Arusha National Park, with huts on the way and an armed ranger for the forest section. The summit morning walks the crater rim in the dark and ends on Socialist Peak with Kilimanjaro in the sunrise. It is a serious mountain and a beautiful one, and far quieter than Kilimanjaro.
Many climbers do Meru first as acclimatisation for Kilimanjaro. Four days on Meru, two days of rest, and then the big mountain. It raises your summit chances and it is a great trip in its own right. Our Meru-first guide under Kilimanjaro explains how the two fit together.
A single day can also be spent on the lower slopes. Walks in the national park go through the forest and onto the open ground with giraffe and buffalo. You do not need to climb Meru to enjoy it.
The Meserani Snake Park, 25 kilometres west of Arusha on the road to the parks, is a stop that suits children. It has snakes, crocodiles and a small Maasai cultural museum, and it runs a free clinic for the local community with the entrance fees. Half an hour to an hour, on the way to Tarangire.
Tengeru, east of the city, has a large market twice a week where the whole district comes to trade. It is less touristy than the central market and busier. Tengeru is also the start of the Lake Duluti walk.
The Arusha Declaration Museum and the Natural History Museum in the old German boma are small and worth a short stop if you are in the centre with an hour to spare. Both tell parts of the country's story that the parks do not.
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