Day 3 – Lake Manyara

This was our third and final day on our Safari and I was a little gutted to be leaving, mostly I was gutted as I have loved the accommodation so much and I knew we were going back to Arusha to stay in Bright Star hotel…which should be renamed ‘not so bright star’ as it’s fairly shitty but for $27NZD a night, we can’t complain too much!
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Backtracking – Frank told us that Lake Manyara National Park is one of Tanzania’s smaller and most underrated parks. While it’s pretty small, its vegetation is diverse, ranging from savannah to marsh to evergreen forest (11 ecosystems in all) and it supports one of the highest biomass densities of large mammals in the world. I was most excited to see the baboons and was praying for another elephant as these are fast becoming my all-time fav animal!

​Result – we managed to see so many baboons, elephants, birds, a couple of monitor lizards and buffalo. It was really overall a fantastic park to visit but I understand why most companies visit it first instead of last as compared to the other 2 it is the least impressive.

We spent about 4 hours overall in the park, had lunch with Frank before making the 2-hour journey back to Arusha, where I slept pretty much the whole way!

So overall, the Safari was amazing. We both think 3days/2nights are enough. We were able to tick off the Big 5, as well as so many other amazing animals as well as some fantastic National parks. Price wise this cost us $900USD pp…yes, it’s expensive but to be honest, all Safari’s are. We again did this with Monkey adventures, and we loved it. This company have made our time in Tanzania so much more rewarding and I cannot recommend them enough.
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Off to Dar El Salaam tomorrow for 1 night before it’s laters’ Africa…HELLO ASIA!!