After breakfast at your hotel, we will pick up and drive to Lake Manyara with a picnic lunch along the way. The parks namesake is a shallow, alkaline lake which expands and contracts with the seasons within a long, silvery bowl of salt deposits. Adjacent to it are wide, grassy floodplains and, further away, bands of mixed acacia woodlands. Continuing on the escarpment, are patches of enchanting evergreen forests, which are sustained by perennial groundwater springs issuing from the base of the escarpment. Lake Manyara’s game includes good numbers of elephant, buffalo and wildebeest along with plenty of giraffe. Look more carefully for zebra, warthog, impala, Kirk’s dik-dik, waterbuck in marshy areas near some of the springs, and klipspringer on the slopes of the escarpment. The broken forests and escarpment make it good landscape for leopard, while Manyara’s healthy lion population are famous for their tree-climbing acrobatics. There are huge troops of baboons – which often number several hundred and are widely regarded as Africa’s largest. As with the big game, the birdlife here is exceptionally varied. In the middle of the lake you’ll often see flocks of pelicans and the pink-shading of distant flamingos, while the margins and floodplains feed innumerable herons, egrets, stilts, stalks, spoonbills and other waders. With so much water around, the woodlands are equally productive, but it’s the evergreen forests where you’ll spot some more entertaining species such as the noisy silvery-cheeked hornbills, crowned eagles and crested guineafowl. Dinner and overnight at lodge.
After breakfast at the hotel, we depart in the early morning heading to the Ngorongoro Highlands area where you have an opportunity to see a Masai Village (not included in price of safari) and other wildlife in the highlands. Overnight stay at one of the accommodations with an amazing view of the crater.
