Zanzibar bound


The sign at the entrance to lake Manyara Lake National Park says: “Home of the climbing lions”

Cosmo explains that due to the terrain of the park there isn’t a lot of open area which means that the big cats that inhabit the park have had to adapt to different ways of hunting.  Leopard’s are already well adapted to the ambush style of hunting in the trees but the lions have had to adapt.  


Cheetahs paws are like dogs and unlike the other cats they can’t retract their claws so they can’t climb trees and consequently aren’t found in the park .


Manyara Lake is a unique environment due to the presence of many springs of “sweet” water that run through the park from the surrounding hills and the salty alkaline water of the lake.  Like Ngorongoro, the lake is the result of volcanic activity and evidence of that abounds with roadways “paved” in pumice stone. 


The game drive starts in a thick forest of Banyan trees and the unique Baobab trees that dot the hills as silent sentinels.  Blue monkeys are in the trees beside the road and their name comes from the blue/green appearance of their fur when the sunlight hits it at the right angle.  The expression on these creatures faces is one of calm contemplation as they pay us no attention, slowly feeding on individual leaves.  


Further on whole families of Baboons start to appear in the trees, babies and teenagers following their parents and sifting through the dry leaf litter for insects.  The young ones chase each other, play-fighting and pulling each others tails.  Occasionally a fight breaks out between 2 males, their raucous screams filling the air around us. 


Cosmo explains that the park contains 3 distinct ecological zones, the forest, the lake and the mixed forest/Savannah.  The transition between the zones is not gradual as one moment we are driving through forest with thick trees and shade and the next we have entered the lake zone with sparse trees and shrubs.  The lake zone has a dystopian appearance with hundreds of dead trees in various stages of decay, Cosmo explains that this is due to an over abundance of rain in the past 2 years which caused the alkaline lake to flood into these areas drowning the trees roots in salt water.  


We are looking for lions in the trees so we are intently scanning all of the low acacia trees on the drive.  We see some bush elephants and zebra but we move on and leave them to the other tour vehicles.  


Unfortunately it’s late morning, with us having chosen to get a later start with the long drive the day before so most of the animals are starting to hunker down as the heat of the day starts to build.  For the rest of the drive all we see are more families of baboons, a few birds and a lot do nothing.


We decide to stop for lunch at a picnic area beside the lake, essentially a few canvas tents where everyone breaks out their lunch boxes on tables.  After lunch we go for a short walk.  Up close, the lake is probably the most unattractive body of water I’ve ever laid my eyes on, the colour of dirty dishwater, dotted with the skeletons of long dead trees and a lovely black ring of dead organic matter lapping the shore.  This doesn’t appear to stop people from having a picnic on a dead tree and others from canoeing in this apocalyptic scene.  With little chance of seeing our tree climbing lion we decide it’s time to get back on the road to Kilamanjaro airport for our flight to Zanzibar. We were hoping for a view of this spectacular mountain but the weather didn’t cooperate and we didn’t even get a hint of it on the way. 


Maybe it was the wrong time of year or time of day but the Manyara park appears to be a bit of a bust compared to the other places we have been.  My advice is if you have limited time to visit Tanzania spent your time in the Serengeti and Ngorongoro and skip this particular park. 


Africa trip advisor rating: 2 stars 


Postscript: I’ve uploaded a fun little video at the end of the blog today. We were driving with the safari roof up which really adds to the way you experience of the countryside, with all of the noise, smells and sights combined for the senses.  Those sights included a mini dust devil which crosses the road in front of us and a bus full of schoolchildren on a field trip which I go into more detail on below. 


On the way through the city of Arusha, we were playing “tag” with a bus full of school kids on a field trip who were singing and dancing and waving at us as we kept passing them and they kept catching up. Brought a smile to all of our faces. Just one little snapshot of the literally thousands of people waving at us from the side of the road on this trip.


Africans have so little and yet they have so much zest for life. In the Instant gratification, self obsessed consumer focused culture that we have created in the west its a good reminder that all you really need is an old tire and a stick, a homemade football and 3 poles lashed together for a goal and your friends to sing and clap along with you to be totally happy and content with the world.



















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