Tanzania’s Lake Manyara
National Park is 130 km from Arusha near the small town of Mto Wa
Mbu. It is on the road to the Serengeti and the Ngorongoro Crater. This
park is often overlooked in favour of the other two giants, which
is a pity as it offers some unusual and scenic game viewing.
The word Manyara is derived from emanyara, a Masai name for a type
of sturdy plant that they traditionally grow to make cattle stockades. There’s a specimen of it at Manyara’s entrance gate.
The park covers 325 sq km and is relatively small owing to the fact
that two thirds is covered by the alkaline Lake Manyara. The remaining
third is a slice of marshes, grassland and acacia woodland
tucked between the lake itself and the Rift Valley escarpment whose
reddish brown wall looms 600 metres on the eastern horizon. There
are fabulous views from the road that climbs up this escarpment from
Mto Wa Mbu towards the Crater. All safari vehicles stop for a
gawk at the pink flamingos on the lake below.
Manyara’s plains game includes buffalo, wildebeest, giraffe and
hyena, and pods of hippo can be found in the Simba River. Pelicans,
storks, geese, herons and cormorants share Lake Manyara with migrant
flamingos, which turn the crystalline edges of the soda lake a vibrant
pink. Manyara is also renowned as the home of the famous tree-climbing
lions. In truth all lions are able to climb trees. The ones in Manyara
don’t have extra inbuilt crampons or anything, it’s just
that lion in other parks don’t have the opportunity to climb trees.
Since Manyara is mostly forested, there are plenty of comfortable
giant fig or acacia trees for the lions to rest in. It's also thought
that they do it to avoid the bothersome tsetse fly that become prevalent
during the dry season. Despite this, sightings of lion in trees are
very rare. You are more likely to find them stalking through the
long grass on the lake shore. Cats are generally much better viewed
on the short plains of the Serengeti and in the Ngorongoro Crater.
Manyara is the ideal location for elephant because of its abundance
of tree and plant life. The park has Tanzania's highest population
of elephant per square km. There are some substantial herds of very
large elderly elephants that crash through Manyara’s forest,
each of them capable of consuming up to 400kg of food a day.
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