Lake Manyara National Park - Africa Natural Tours ( africanaturaltours.com )
Lake Manyara
National Park: Africa Natural Tours
AFRICA
NATURAL TOURS (The best tour company in Tanzania)
Specialized
in: Wildlife safaris, Cultural tourism,
Beach holiday sand
Mountain
climbing
Contact
+255 653 679 958
Located
beneath the cliffs of the Manyara Escarpment, on the edge of the Rift Valley,
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 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 flamingo stoop and graze by the thousands
colourful specks against the grey minerals of the lake shore. 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 the primates.
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”.
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 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 bushbuck tread warily through the shadows, and the outsized
forest hornbills honk cacophonously in the high canopy.
In
contrast 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, and so do the giraffes – some so
dark in coloration that they appear to be black from a distance.
Inland
of the floodplain, a narrow belt of acacia woodland is the favoured haunt of
Manyara’s legendary tree-climbing lions and impressively tusked elephants.
Squadrons of banded mongoose dart between the acacias, whereas the diminutive
Kirk’s dik-dik
For more information
visit www.africanaturaltours.com
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