Lake Manyara Day Trip

Day Trip — Lake Manyara National Park

Depart Moshi or Arusha early in the morning for the 2.5-hour drive to Lake Manyara National Park, passing through scenic Maasai villages and the dramatic landscape of the Great Rift Valley. Enter the park and begin your game drive through the dense groundwater forest, where troop after troop of olive baboons forage by the roadside and blue monkeys leap through the canopy. Watch the branches of acacia trees for the park's most famous residents — tree-climbing lions, a behavior rarely seen elsewhere in Africa. Emerging from the forest, the landscape opens onto floodplain and the alkaline lake itself, often carpeted pink with thousands of flamingos. Giraffe, buffalo, wildebeest, zebra, and impala graze the open areas, while hippos wallow in the hippo pool. Enjoy a picnic lunch at a designated viewpoint overlooking the lake, then continue your afternoon game drive before exiting the park and beginning the return journey. Arrive back in Moshi or Arusha by early evening.