Lake Manyara National Park
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Lake Manyara Safari Holidays and Accommodation.
Lake Manyara National Park Tanzania is strategically positioned just off the road from Arusha to Ngorongoro and Serengeti and represents a good break in your journey and an interesting day’s safari. One enters and exits from the same gate, so that a visit to park normally makes a large loop. The park is relatively small but this does not deter from its attraction. It covers 127 square miles but most of this is lake, leaving some 40 square miles of park to visit. This is normally at most a full day’s safari and many visitors spend only half a day, using the park as a useful stop off between other destinations.
Lake Manyara, “ the loveliest (lake) in Africa” according to Ernest Hemingway, is set against the imposing backdrop of the Gregory rift wall, the Great Rift Valley’s western escarpment. The Park is set between the valley wall and the edge of the lake. It is always green as many streams and springs feed into the lake from the crater highlands and there is both dense mahogany forest in the Northern part of the park and an acacia forest around the Endabash River to the South of the Park. On the edges of the lake are large flood plains which allow for good game viewing.
It is not just the dramatic setting of the Park which makes it interesting but also the rich fauna that the park contains. There are more than 400 recorded species of birds in the Park including many migratory birds such as flamingos. Although the baboons are the animal that makes itself most visible from the moment one enters the park, there is a rich diversity in the park including large numbers of leopards, tree climbing lions, for which the park is famous, large herds of hippos which depending on the level of the lake can be seen at very close quarters, impala, wildebeest, elephants, buffalo, giraffes and warthogs.
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Northern Tanzania Safari