Thank you for an amazing safari. Our guide Patrick was the best. His extensive knowledge of flora and fauna was amazing. He has a great sense of humor; he is warm, patient and professional. Patrick not ...
Constantine and Luis Regalado Physician Wellington, FL
Arusha National Park is not large at just 550 square kilometers (210 sq mi) especially compared to its nearby sibling but what it lacks in size, it makes up for with diversity and convenience. The park is short drive from the Northern Tanzania town of Arusha, which serves as the regional hub for travelers visiting Tanzania's Northern Circuit. The park includes almost all of the landscapes and wildlife one is likely to find in the Northern Circuit: montane rain forest on the shoulders of Mount Meru, wooded savannah, alkaline lakes, alpine ridges, volcanic craters and grasslands.
Much of the park was at one time a working cattle ranch whose matriarch, the German emigrant Margarete Trappe, gained renown as a skilled hunter and ardent conservationist. Trappe set aside much of her ranch as a game sanctuary. This sanctuary and the rest of the farm eventually became Ngurdoto Crater National Park. When Mount Meru was added to the park a few years later, the name was changed to Arusha National Park. Today the park is crowded on its fringes by agriculture, although authorities are considering enhanced protection of neighboring forests.
The park can be divided into three sections or fingers: Mount Meru in the western finger; Ngurdoto Crater in the southeast, and Momela Lakes to the northeast.
Mount Meru stands at 4,566 meters (14,990 ft), making it Africa's fifth tallest mountain. Africa's tallest Mount Kilimanjaro is just 50 km (30 mi) to the east, and provides a dramatic backdrop to the landscape here. Some trekkers tackle Meru as a warm up for the longer climb up Kilimanjaro. Determined climbers can make the summit in two long days. Three or four day excursions are more common.
Ngurdoto Crater in the eastern part of Arusha is like a miniature Ngorongoro Crater. The crater is 3 km (2 mi) in diameter, rim to rim. The marshy and verdant crater floor is 400 m (1200 ft) below the rim and home to grazing buffalo and warthogs. Unlike Ngorongoro, visitors are not permitted on the crater floor, although the buffaloes and assorted wildlifecome and go as they please.
The Momela Lakes are shallow, alkaline lakes like those, such as Lake Manyara, found throughout the Great Rift Valley. The lakes are home to flamingos, of course, and other water fowl, and, depending on the time of year, migrants from as far away as the Middle East and Europe.
Wildlife
Most of the familiar East African wildlife species are present in Arusha, with the exception of lions. The park's forests are home to 400 species of bird, with several, including Hartlaub's turaco, more likely to be spotted here than anywhere else in northern Tanzania. Arusha's forests are also the best place in the Northern Circuit to glimpse black and white colobus monkeys as well as large forest herbivores such as bushbucks and duikers. Hippos wade the waters of the Momela Lakes and wildebeest and Burchelli's zebras swish their tails at flies on the park's stretches of grassland.
