Best hotels around the world – Four Seasons Safari Lodge Serengeti – The 77-room Four Seasons Safari Lodge Serengeti opened in December 2012 and is particularly well-suited for first-time safari travelers, extended families and groups.

It includes 12 suites with plunge pools, 5 free-standing villas with private swimming pools, a spa with six treatment pavilions, three restaurants, a Kijana Klub for kids and teens and meeting facilities. Two active watering holes on the property allow for magnificent animal viewing at peak times of day and every room has an elevated open-air sundeck providing direct views over the Serengeti. The Lodge is the first of three Four Seasons’ projects to open in Tanzania, with the future development of a luxury tented safari camp in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area and an exclusive beach resort on the island of Zanzibar to follow.

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Serengeti National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is acclaimed for the best safari game drives and abundant year-round wildlife. The famous annual migration features more than two million wildebeests and 250,000 zebras. The Serengeti is also a great place for viewing “the Big Five” must-see animals for every African safari: lions, leopards, elephants, buffaloes and rhinoceroses – with the big cats and elephants in particular abundance.

Yes, the Four Seasons Serengeti Lodge is the epitome of luxury. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t right in the middle of the kind of action you want to experience when you visit one of the world’s premier game reserves.

The property: The 77 guest rooms, suites, and villas feature contemporary African décor along with mosquito netting-draped four-poster beds, air conditioning, and high-speed Internet access. Many of the rooms contain a private, open-air sun deck and a plunge pool overlooking the plains and a watering hole that receives frequent visits from elephants, zebra, giraffe, and lions.

To give some indication of the level of luxury offered here, this is the property where the Tanzanian president, Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete, stays when he is on vacation.

First impressions by Jo Piazza: I should have locked the door. Everyone working at the lodge had told me to keep the door locked. I didn’t listen to them. So it shouldn’t have come as a surprise when I woke to find a medium-sized baboon sitting on my dresser, watching me sleep, and eating the sugar from my coffee tray.

I threw up my arms in fright. He did the same. Two thoughts went through my mind. Would he attack me? And then, I should be taking a video — this could go viral.

My new friend invited his buddies to the party, and as the train of monkeys marched through the door as though they owned the place, I made a command decision. Knowing little about what makes baboons tick, I used an old trick a camp counselor once taught me about what to do if you encounter a bear in the woods. I stood on the bed and made myself as large as possible and emitted a noise — half-roar, half-bellow — that showed I was not going to be held hostage by a gang of monkeys in my luxury hotel room. They looked at me with rightful skepticism. One of them picked up a bag of artisanal, small-batch coffee that I had bought near Mount Kilimanjaro, tucked it under his arm, and sauntered back into the Serengeti.

Source: yahoo.com