Lake Manyara National Park
From the entrance gate, the road winds through an expanse of lush jungle-like groundwater forest where hundred-strong baboon troops lounge nonchalantly along the roadside; the blue monkeys scamper nimbly between the ancient mahogany trees; dainty bushbucks tread warily through the shadows, and the forest hornbills honk in the high canopy.
Lake Manyara National Park offers varied ecosystems, incredible bird life, and breathtaking views. Located on the way to Ngorongoro Crater and the Serengeti, Lake Manyara National Park is worth a stop in its own right. Its ground water forests, bush plains, baobab strewn cliffs, and algae-streaked hot springs offer an incredible ecological variety in a small area, rich in wildlife and incredible numbers of birds.
The alkaline soda of Lake Manyara is home to an incredible array of bird life that thrives on its brackish waters. Pink flamingos stoop and graze by the thousands. Yellow-billed storks swoop and corkscrew on thermal winds, rising up from the escarpment, and herons flap their wings against the sun-drenched sky. Even reluctant bird-watchers will find something to watch and marvel at within the national park.
Lake Manyara’s famous tree-climbing lions are another reason to pay a visit to this park. The only kind of their species in the world, they make the ancient mahogany and elegant acacias their home during the rainy season, and are a well-known but rather rare feature of the northern park.
In addition to the lions, the national park is also home to the largest concentration of baboons anywhere in the world, a fact that accounts for interesting game viewing of large families of these primates.
Ngorongoro Crater
Activities inside the Ngorongoro Crater itself are limited to game driving only. There are also picnic spots in the park. A full range of activities is however on offer in the wider Ngorongoro Conservation Area, including walking, trekking, excursions to Olduvai Gorge, and visiting the Maasai and other tribes.
Serengeti National Park
The Serengeti ecosystem is one of the oldest on earth. The essential features of climate, vegetation, and fauna have barely changed in the past million years. The early man himself made an appearance in Olduvai Gorge about two million years ago. Some patterns of life, death, adaptation, and migration are as old as the hills themselves.
It is the great migration for which Serengeti is perhaps most famous. Over a million wildebeest and about 200,000 zebras flow south from the northern hills to the southern plains for the short rains every October and November, and then swirl west and north after the long rains in April, May, and June. So strong is the ancient instinct to move that no drought, gorge, or crocodile infested river can hold them back.
