At around 45 minutes from Kilimanjaro airport, Arusha is the obvious choice for an overnight stay on arrival or before departing as this is ‘on the way’ to the parks of the north of Tanzania. With Arusha being a fairly big city there is a good range of decent accommodation, which we focus on the outskirts of town, where you will find coffee and banana plantations, rather than the busy and noisy centre.

While Arusha national park is pretty and interesting, and worth a visit if you want to rest for a couple of days after your flights, we generally find that our clients spend one logistical night here rather than allocate time to visit. If you have a couple of hours to kill before or after a flight, then visiting the Arusha cultural heritage centre is pleasant. Overall, in the vast majority of cases, Arusha serves as a stop off on the way from or to somewhere.