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
Tarangire National Park is not as well known as Serengeti, Lake Manyara and Ngorongoro and it is often overlooked when travelers are planning their Northern Circuit itineraries. This is too bad, for with the exception of the Ngorongoro Crater floor, during the dry season that stretches from June through September, Tarangire hosts the greatest concentration of wildlife of all of the Northern Circuit parks.
Like the migrants of the Serengeti, the animals of Tarangire follow the water. Unlike Serengeti's wanderers, who pursue the rain and the ripening grasses all the way to Kenya, Tarangire's thirsty turn their snouts to the river at the center of the park. Tens of thousands of wildebeest, zebras, giraffes, elephants, gazelles, buffaloes, eland, oryx, impala congregate on the banks of the shriveling Tarangire River. Lions, leopards, cheetahs, hyenas and wild dogs come to quench their thirst, too, and their hunger.
Rain - or its lack - is not the sole cause of the congregation on the Tarangire River. Encroachment by people on the borders of the park has altered the historic migration patterns of several of the large mammals – notably wildebeest and zebras and gazelles. Once these and other migratory animals scattered from Tarangire in all directions, but most routes are blocked, now, with the exception of a few routes through corridors leading to Lake Manyara to the north. Elephants, for example, have long relied on rainy season swamps and marshes beyond the northern border of the park. Without access to these vital wet season territories, the park's animal populations would surely decline. Tanzanian authorities have created buffer zones and special conservation areas in these key areas outside the park, jointly managed by local villages, with the aim of protecting the park and the wider ecosystem while improving the lives of villagers. The Tarangire Conservation Area, for example, includes low impact or “eco” tourism facilities, which feature day and night game walks and other experiences not always available in the larger lodges and reserves.
No discussion of Tarangire is complete without mention of the ubiquitous and iconic baobab tree. Baobabs, with their impossibly thick trunks and impossibly sparse canopies, dot the landscape. Baobab trunks are hollow and store water, thousands of gallons of it, to see the trees through the dry season. The fruit, sometimes called “monkey bread fruit,” is edible and nutritious, with high concentrations of calcium, iron and Vitamin C. Across Africa the fruit is made into juices and porridges. In East Africa, the fruit is dried and coated with sugar and eaten as a treat called "ubuyu".
Wildlife
There are a lot of animals at Tarangire, both in variety and in sheer number. The park's promoters usually boast that Tarangire is home to Tanzania's largest concentration of elephants, some 2800 individuals, in herds numbering as many as 300. In the dry season they head for the river along with everyone else, dipping their trunks in the dwindling waters or peeling bark from baobab trees and stripping leaves from acacia trees and whatever else is in reach. More than 500 bird species have been identified in Tarangire, including the ostrich, which is a bird too big to fly, and the Kori bustard, which, weighing in at 25 to 40 pounds and standing three and a half feet tall, is a bird almost too big to fly. Wildebeest, zebras, Grant's and Thomson's gazelles, impala, hartebeest and eland are all present in Tarangire. Lions climb trees here, as they do in Lake Manyara, and so do leopards and African pythons. Hyenas, wild dogs and cheetahs round out the roster of prominent predators. A couple of dry climate survivalists are found here, too. The oryx with its distinctive black and white snout and long spear-like horns, and the lithe gerenuk with its narrow face and long neck are not likely to be spotted anywhere else on the Northern Circuit.
