Tanzania Days 3-7

During five days we visited four National Parks and covered something like 2000 kilometres on the most bumpy roads that we've ever drove on (or rather been driven on). The name of Serengeti - endless plains in Maasai language – reflects very well its vastness. This park has one of the largest concentrations of wild animals on the planet and features spectacular migrations, we witnessed the one of wildebeests and zebras. Ngorongoro Park borders Serengeti and its key point is an 18 kilometre wide crater (which is actually one of the largest calderas (collapsed volcanos) on the planet). At an altitude of more than 2000 meters it offers spectacular mountains views and great wildlife encounters. Ngorongoro crater, including its rim, has been voted our favourite place. Why? For many reasons. Scenic mountain landscapes in an intense green colour, very pleasant temperature, and most importantly of all - on a relatively small space we could see loads of wildlife (including black rhino, lions, flamingos, hippos, zebras, etc – see the photos below). The fact that Ngorongoro is so compact, has one more advantage, it saves you lot of ass pain, as you don't need to drive so much on dirt roads. Tarangire Park features hoards of elephants - even Ieva that visited already quite a number of game parks, admits that she's never seen so many of them. On top of elephants, giraffes, antelopes, warthogs, and many others, Tarangire also is famous for baobab trees. And the last but not least – Lake Manyara park comprising an evergreen forest and a large, salty mineral-rich lake full of flamingos. Manyara is beautifully set at the foot of the Great Rift Valley. The Rift Valley is an attraction in itself – it's a super long trench 6000 km long separating two blocks of the Earth's plates that runs from Syria to Mozambique. Lake Manyara Park is full of monkeys – baboons, vervet and black monkeys; it also offers memorable views of giraffes, zebras and wildebeests in the pink background of flamingos feeding in the lake.




That's the narrative, though the pics speak the best for themselves :)