Plenty of safari companies already provide great safaris of the East African Rift System, or Great Rift Valley however, experiencing the exceptional, less known about GeoDiversity (rocks, soils and landscapes), combined with the already famous EcoDiversity (plants and animals), allows the interrelationships to be discovered. This provides the inquisitive traveler a more complete and even more unique, experience.

The Great Rift Valley is famously renowned for its numerous unique native flora and fauna species, many directly due to the underlying GeoDiversity, especially, that related to the relatively recent volcanism associated with the rifting. Some of the oldest rocks on the planet, more than 2.8 Billion years old, can be seen in the Serengeti and Masai Mara.

The region includes two ‘Natural Wonders of the World’, the Serengeti NP and Ngorongoro NP, a giant caldera formed by a catastrophic volcanic eruption, creating a self-contained reserve. Between these two National Parks lies the Oldupai Gorge and Laetoli, where some of the most important discoveries of hominin fossils and footprints have been made.

And in addition to Mount Kilimanjaro, a volcano almost 6km high, and nearby Mt Meru volcano at Arusha, at just over 4.5km high, there’s also Oldoinyo Lengai (Mountain of the Gods), the only volcano on the planet that presently erupts carbonatite, an unusual lava which comes out black, dries white, and flows like water. And at almost 3km high, this one can be trekked in one day.