Arusha National Park

Karibu Heritage House is a wonderfully quiet and comfortable house in busy Arusha. It has a restaurant so we don’t have to look for a good place to eat. One hour before meals, we let them know what we want to eat and when and the food is ready by the set time. The choice of food has been good and it has been tasty. All of our meals are included in our trip.

This morning we had a vegetable omelet with sausages, toast, juice and coffee at 6:30 a.m. At 7:30, Norton our new driver and guide picked us up in his Toyota Land Cruiser and we went on our first safari to Arusha National Park. Just a 45 minute drive away and in the foothills of Mt. Meru, Tanzania’s 2nd largest mountain (old volcano) after Mt. Kilimanjaro.

Arusha National Park was established in 1960 and covers a total of 542 square kilometers. Not big but big enough for a full day for hunting for animals and birds. We drove on rough roads through a variety of habitats including a moist savannah, an evergreen rainforest and a lake area.

It is home to the world's largest population of giraffes as well as lots of other wildlife like zebras, sky blue monkeys, baboons, black-and-white colobus monkeys, Cape buffaloes, warthogs, bushbucks, etc. There are birds galore, a birdwatcher’s paradise, with over 400 species including large groups of pink flamingoes.

We drove around for a couple of hours, easily spotting lots of animals, and then stopped to do a 2 hour walking safari to a waterfall. For this, a park ranger with a rifle had to guide us. The trail led us past a huge herd of Cape Buffalos that enjoyed staring at us as much as we enjoyed staring at them. We passed ancient Strangler fig trees. The trees begin their life as a tiny seed, often deposited high in the branches of another tree by a bird or monkey. From there, it grows downward, sending roots toward the ground while also climbing upward to reach the sunlight. Over time, these roots envelop the host tree, eventually “strangling” it and taking its place in the forest canopy.

After the hike we had a picnic beside one of the seven shallow, alkaline Momella Lakes. Norton brought out a huge insulated bag with 5 pots in it. They contained a hot chicken stew, rice, baked beans, fried bananas and watermelon slices. Quite a picnic.

We continued driving around the lakes looking for interesting waterfowl and then wound our way through the forest and headed back to the hotel, close to 10 hours after we had left.

A quick swim in the pool cooled us off before we ate a tasty dinner and made plans for the following day.

P.S. It was only a week ago that the election protests had taken place but everything seems to back to normal.Read more