Lake Manyara National Park

Lake Manyara NP was our first foray into the African wildlife scene and we were not disappointed. Lions, hippos, giraffes, flamingos, baboons, elephants, gazelle, impala, monkeys, and birds, birds, birds.

The best piece of advice I can offer for Lake Manyara or any other safari is to make sure you have a good guide/driver beforehand. You might have to pay a little more for a top guide, but it is well worth the cost. If you can afford a private guide/driver, even better. Ours was exceedingly knowledgeable about the environment and the wildlife. He was able to spot and point out animals that we would have never seen our own. A place like Lake Manyara is quite scenic to drive through, but when someone is able to point out and describe things you would not otherwise notice, it makes the experience truly memorable.

Lake Manyara is an interesting location that is very different from what one expects in East Africa. The lake provides year-round water, which makes Lake Manyara green and lush, and this location is one of the best for monkeys and baboons. We found, however, that the game drive here was a bit lacking compared to the other three locations we visited. The lake is full of flamingos, but there are no roads passing nearby (at least there were not when we did our game drive), so all we saw was a pink haze in the distance. We also saw small numbers of elephants, lions, giraffes... but after being spoiled by the amount of wildlife in the other parks, we were a wee bit disappointed. It is interesting to see this location, due to its dissimilarity from the other parks, but if you want to save money by cutting a day from the safari, this is the one to skip.

Amazing experience with my 8-year-old son

It's the first time my husband and son had been to Africa. I went there before but for business - only for three days. It's not like we saw on TV (tragedies etc.). We went through Dar-es-salaam, Tanzania's business city. We visited the spice island of Zanzibar first before flying to Arusha and then Lake Manyara National Park - where my son had a blast.

Coming from Minnesota - it felt hot even though it's supposed to be one of their cooler months. But it gets hotter even in Minnesota. We loved the weather.

You can't expect to get the first world service in a third world country but I would say - we're really impressed with what we paid for. Plenty of wildlife, beautiful uncontaminated air, exotic food, very good and kind African people.

It's our best trip ever!! Going again in the next two years,

A lot of elephants. This is the place where you come clostest to the elephants. There is some gaselles and monkeys here, but not that many other animals.

The park is great with lots of flamingoes and other wildlife

Lake Manyara is pretty small comparing to other national parks we visited. What we like about this place is that we saw lions resting on the trees which was quite spectacular, thanks to the springwater that has an influence on their behaviors. There were not so many kinds of wild animals to see here although olive baboons were notably abundant. The lanscape is a mix of plain and forest and not so scenic as Serengeti or Ngorongoro.

A great place to start your safari. Great assortment of animals in a beautiful setting.

Baboons, hippos and leopards.

It was rainin and one of the rivers flooded so we were unable to access a large portion of the park it seemed. It is heavily forested which made it difficult to spot wildlife, but still very beautiful.

Wrong time of year for the flamingos, wild life was poor.