Lake Manyara National Park is one of Tanzania’s smallest parks and although many safari itineraries skip it, we strongly recommend you make the detour. The dramatic western escarpment of the Rift Valley forms the park’s western border. To the east is the alkaline Lake Manyara, which covers one-third of the park’s 648 sq km, but shrinks considerably in the dry season. During the rains the lake hosts millions of flamingos (best seen outside the park on the lake’s east shore) and a diversity of other birdlife.
While Manyara lacks the raw drama and many of the particular animals of other northern circuit destinations its vegetation is diverse, ranging from savannah to marshes to evergreen forest (11 different ecosystems in all) and it supports one of the high biomass densities of large mammals in the world. Elephants, hippos, zebras, giraffes, buffalo, wildebeest, waterbucks, klipspringers and dik diks are often spotted. Leopards and hyena are also here.
But one of the park's biggest drawcards is also one of the strangest: Lake Manyara is home to a famous population of tree-climbing lions. Lions climb trees in other parks, too, but it’s a real specialty here – scientists speculate that they may have developed the habit to escape a nasty biting fly that devastated the Ngorongoro Crater lion populations back in the 1960s. Tracking them down can be tricky, but worth the effort.
