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Lake Manyara National Park
Lake Manyara National Park one of the most diverse of Tanzania's national parks, a tiny (325km²) combination of rift valley lake, dense woodlands and steep mountainside. Stretching for 50km along the base of the rusty-gold 600-metre high Rift Valley escarpment, Lake Manyara is a scenic gem, with a setting extolled by Ernest Hemingway as “the loveliest I had seen in Africa”.
Lake Manyara is situated on the way to Ngorongoro Crater and the Serengeti and the park is well worth a stop in its own right. There is also the park’s outstanding background, bordered to the west by the dramatic Rift Valley’s western escarpment. The entrance gate lies 126km west of Arusha one and half hours drive along a newly surfaced road, close to the racially varied market town of Mto-Wa-Mbu.
Lake Manyara National Park takes pride in diversified habitat is mirrored by its varied fauna, with some of the more common and visible large mammal species being the buffalo, elephant, giraffe, zebra, lion and wildebeests. Prominently renowned for its tree-climbing lions, which spend most of the day spread out along the branches of acacia trees, Lake Manyara is also home to troops of baboons and blue monkeys. Along with the astonishing tree climbing lions there are the usual browsers and grazers as well as the curios-looking banded mongoose.
Lake Manyara National Park is rich with fantastic birdlife. More than 400 species of birds including African spoonbill, cormorants, flamingo, pelican, red billed quelea, sacred ibis and Egyptian geese, white pelican and white faced duck are prominent in this vicinity. Aside from the park, the alkaline soda-content Lake Manyara also thrives with several brackish water birds such as the Pink-hued flamingos plus thousands of colorful specks blustering off the lake shore.
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