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- Arusha - Tanzania
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The closest national park to Arusha town – northern Tanzania’s safari capital – Arusha National Park is a multi-faceted jewel, often overlooked by safarigoers, despite offering the opportunity to explore a beguiling diversity of habitats within a few hours.
The entrance gate leads into shadowy montane forest inhabited by inquisitive blue monkeys and colourful turacos and trogons – the only place on the northern safari circuit where the acrobatic black-and-white colobus monkey is easily seen. In the midst of the forest stands the spectacular Ngurdoto Crater, whose steep, rocky cliffs enclose a wide marshy floor dotted with herds of buffalo and warthog.
Further north, rolling grassy hills enclose the tranquil beauty of the Momela Lakes, each one a different hue of green or blue. Their shallows sometimes tinged pink with thousands of flamingos, the lakes support a rich selection of resident and migrant waterfowl, and shaggy water-bucks display their large lyre-shaped horns on the watery fringes. Giraffes glide across the grassy hills, between grazing zebra herds, while pairs of wide-eyed dik-dik dart into scrubby bush like overgrown hares on spindly legs.
Tarangire National Park,The open grasslands, acacia trees and the Tarangire River paint the wild landscape.The main activities are game drives, walking safari with armed guides (rangers) and night game drives.
Tarangire River has shriveled to a shadow of its wet season self.
But it is choked with wildlife. Thirsty nomads have wandered hundreds of parched kilometres knowing that here,always, there is water.
Herds of up to 300 elephants scratch the dry river bed for underground streams, while migratory wildebeest, zebra, buffalo, impala, gazelle, hartebeest and eland crowd the shrinking lagoons. It’s the greatest concentration of wildlife outside the Serengeti ecosystem – a smorgasbord for predators – and the one place in Tanzania where dry-country antelope such as the stately fringe-eared oryx and peculiar long-necked gerenuk are regularly observed.
During the rainy season, the seasonal visitors scatter over a 20,000 sq km (12,500 sq miles) range until they exhaust the green plains and the river calls once more. But Tarangire’s mobs of elephant are easily encountered, wet or dry. The swamps, tinged green year round, are the focus for 550 bird varieties, the most breeding species in one habitat anywhere in the world.
Lake Manyara is a scenic gem, with a setting extolled by Ernest Hemingway as “the loveliest I had seen in Africa”.
The compact game-viewing circuit through Manyara offers a virtual microcosm of the Tanzanian safari experience. From the entrance gate, the road winds through an expanse of lush junglelike groundwater forest where hundred-strong baboon troops lounge nonchalantly along the roadside, blue monkeys scamper nimbly between the ancient mahogany trees, dainty bushbuck tread warily through the shadows, and outsized forest hornbills honk cacophonously in the high canopy.
Contrasting with the intimacy of the forest is the grassy floodplain and its expansive views eastward, across the alkaline lake, to the jagged blue volcanic peaks that rise from the endless Maasai Steppes. Large buffalo, wildebeest and zebra herds congregate on these grassy plains, as do giraffes – some so dark in coloration that they appear to be black from a distance.
Manyara provides the perfect introduction to Tanzania’s bird life. More than 400 species have been recorded, and even a first-time visitor to Africa might reasonably expect to observe 100 of these in one day. Highlights include thousands of pink-hued flamingos on their perpetual migration, as well as other large waterbirds such as pelicans, cormorants and storks.
Ngorongoro Crater is one among the BIG 5 national parks in Tanzania but also among the 7 wonders of the world.
Ngorongoro Crater is renowned for its exceptional beauty and unique features along with its perfection in rare wild species. Spend your vacation on 12 miles wide and 2,000 feet deep escarpment.
Three million years ago there existed a massive super volcano mountain that stood higher and mightier than its neighbor Mt.Kilimanjaro. Its glory all around fell when it erupted with a blast so ferocious that it caved in on itself, an implosion creating a caldera spanning a hundred square miles. It is12miles wide and 2,000 feet deep.
But its glory returned after a few decades. Over the course of a few years this geologic divot filled with life as it caught pockets of fresh water, developed lush vegetation and got arrival from the wild species.
A million wildebeest… each one driven by the same ancient rhythm, fulfilling its instinctive role in the inescapable cycle of life: a frenzied three-week bout of territorial conquests and mating; survival of the fittest as 40km (25 mile) long columns plunge through crocodile infested waters on the annual exodus north; replenishing the species in a brief population explosion that produces more than 8,000 calves daily before the 1,000 km (600 mile) pilgrimage begins again.
Tanzania’s oldest and most popular national park, also a World Heritage Site and recently proclaimed a World Wide Wonder, the Serengeti is famed for its annual migration, when some six million hooves pound the open plains, as more than 200,000 zebra and 300,000 Thomson’s gazelle join the wildebeest’s trek for fresh grazing.
Yet even when the migration is quiet, the Serengeti offers arguably the most scintillating game-viewing in Africa: great herds of buffalo, smaller groups of elephant and giraffe, and thousands upon thousands of eland, topi, kongoni, impala and Grant’s gazelle.
The spectacle of predator versus prey dominates Tanzania’s greatest park. Golden-maned lion prides feast on the abundance of plain grazers. Solitary leopards haunt the acacia trees lining the Seronera River, while a high density of cheetahs prowls the southeastern plains.
The area was proposed to be up graded into a National Park status so as to regain wildlife population and secure their land from other incompatible uses. Mkomazi’ comes from Pare vernacular: one of the biggest tribes in the Kilimanjaro Region in Northern Tanzania, meaning ‘The source of water’.
Indeed as the name befits, the only permanent and reliable source of water in Mkomazi National Park is the Umba River which also forms the boundary to the South – East of the protected area. The National Park was commissioned as a Game Reserve in 1951 following the degazettment of the much larger Ruvu Game Reserve.
It was declared as a Game Reserve to preserve both flora and fauna and utilize them sustainably through tourism, game hunting and wildlife viewing.
Tourist attractions: Diversity of Fauna and Flora, the only protected area in Tanzania with large and visible population of Gerenuk. Endangered species particularly Black Rhino and Wild dogs.
