Rubondo Island National park

Rubondo Island National park

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Rubondo Island National Park is Tanzania’s only park on Lake Victoria. The island attracts a small number of visitors each year, mainly game fishermen and bird enthusiasts. Rubondo Island became a game reserve in 1965, to provide a sanctuary for animals. Rubondo Island was gazetted as a national park in 1977. Today Rubondo is uninhabited. Consequently, 80% of the island remains forested today. The 400 “fisher folk”, who lived on the island and maintained banana plantations, were resettled on neighbouring islands and onto the mainland by the government in the late 1960s.

Rubondo Island is located in the southwestern corner of Lake Victoria, Tanzania. Rubondo Island is about 150 km (93 mi) west of Mwanza. The main island, Rubondo (2o 18′ S, 31o 50′ E) is 237 km2 in size. The island protects another 11 islets, none much larger than 2 km2. These 10 islands form the Rubondo Island National Park covering an area of 456.8 km2 (176.4 sq mi).

Park Activities

Fishing, Bird Watching, Walking Safaris, (Rangers required.  Can be arranged in advance through Park Office, visitors are advised to carry some dry stuff while going for long walks.

Kitulo national park

Kitulo National Park

Kitulo national park

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Kitulo National Park is a protected area of montane grassland on the Kitulo Plateau in the southern highlands of Tanzania. The park is at an elevation of 2,600 metres (8,500 ft) between the peaks of the Kipengere and Poroto mountains and covers an area of 412.9 square kilometres (159.4 sq mi), lying partly in Mbeya Region and mostly in Njombe Region. The park is administered by Tanzania National Parks (TANAPA) and is the first national park in tropical Africa to be established primarily to protect its flora.

Locals refer to the Kitulo Plateau as Bustani ya Mungu – The Garden of God – while botanists have dubbed it the Serengeti of Flowers, host to ‘one of the great floral spectacles of the world’. And Kitulo is indeed a rare botanical marvel, home to a full 350 species of vascular plants, including 45 varieties of terrestrial orchid, which erupt into a riotous wildflower display of breathtaking scale and diversity during the main rainy season of late November to April.

Perched at around 2,600 metres (8,500 ft) between the rugged peaks of the Kipengere, Poroto and Livingstone Mountains, the well-watered volcanic soils of Kitulo support the largest and most important montane grassland community in Tanzania.

One of the most important watersheds for the Great Ruaha River, Kitulo is well known for its floral significance – not only a multitude of orchids, but also the stunning yellow-orange red-hot poker and a variety of aloes, proteas, geraniums, giant lobelias, lilies and aster daisies, of which more than 30 species are endemic to southern Tanzania.
Big game is sparsely represented, though a few hardy mountain reedbuck and eland still roam the open grassland.

But Kitulo – a botanist and hiker’s paradise – is also highly alluring to birdwatchers. Tanzania’s only population of the rare Denham’s bustard is resident, alongside a breeding colonyrua of the endangered blue swallow and such range-restricted species as mountain marsh widow, Njombe cisticola and Kipengere seedeater. Endemic species of butterfly, chameleon, lizard and frog further enhance the biological wealth of God’s Garden.

About the Kitulo Plateau National Park
Size: 412.9 sq km (159 sq miles)
Location: Southern Tanzania.
The temporary park headquarters at Matamba are situated approximately 100km (60 miles) from Mbeya town.

Getting there
4×4 only.
From Chimala, 78km east of Mbeya along the surfaced main road to Dar es Salaam, head south along the rough but spectacular dirt road – called Hamsini na Saba (57) after the number of hairpin bends along its length – to the temporary park headquarters at Matamba, from where it’s another hour’s drive to the plateau.
Basic and erratic public transport is available.

What to do
Good hiking trails exist and will soon be developed into a formal trail system.
Open walking across the grasslands to watch birds and wildflowers.
Hill climbing on the neighbouring ranges. A half-day hike from the park across the Livingstone Mountains leads to the sumptuous Matema Beach on Lake Nyasa.

When to go
Wildflower displays peak between December and April.
The sunnier months of September to November are more comfortable for hiking but less rewarding to botanists.
Conditions are cold and foggy from June to August.

Gombe Stream National Park

Gombe Stream National Park

Gombe Stream National Park

TAILOR MADE SAFARI

Gombe Stream National Park is An excited whoop that erupts from deep in the forest, boosted immediately by a dozen other voices, rising in volume and tempo, and pitch to a frenzied shrieking crescendo. It is the famous ‘pant-hoot’ call: a bonding ritual that allows the participants to identify each other through their individual vocal stylizations. To the human listener, walking through the ancient forests of Gombe Stream, this spine-chilling outburst is also an indicator of imminent visual contact with man’s closest genetic relative: the chimpanzee.

Gombe is the smallest of Tanzania’s national parks: a fragile strip of chimpanzee habitat straddling the steep slopes and river valleys that hem in the sandy northern shore of Lake Tanganyika. Its chimpanzees – habituated to human visitors – were made famous by the pioneering work of Jane Goodall, who in 1960 founded a behavioral research program that now stands as the longest-running study of its kind in the world. The matriarch Fifi, the last surviving member of the original community, only three years old when Goodall first set foot in Gombe, is still regularly seen by visitors.

Chimpanzees share about 98% of their genes with humans, and no scientific expertise is required to distinguish between the individual repertoires of pants, hoots, and screams that define the celebrities, the powerbrokers, and the supporting characters. Perhaps you will see a flicker of understanding when you look into a chimp’s eyes, assessing you in return – a look of apparent recognition across the narrowest of species barriers.

The most visible of Gombe’s other mammals are also primates. A troop of beachcomber olive baboons, under study since the 1960s, is exceptionally habituated, while red-tailed and red colobus monkeys – the latter regularly hunted by chimps – stick to the forest canopy.

The park’s 200-odd bird species range from the iconic fish eagle to the jewel-like Peter’s twinspots that hop tamely around the visitors’ center.

After dusk, a dazzling night sky is complemented by the lanterns of hundreds of small wooden boats, bobbing on the lake like a sprawling city.

Katavi National Park

Katavi National Park

Katavi National Park

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Katavi National Park Isolated, untrammeled, and seldom visited, Katavi is a true wilderness, providing the few intrepid souls who make it there with a thrilling taste of Africa as it must have been a century ago.

Tanzania’s third largest national park, it lies in the remote southwest of the country, within a truncated arm of the Rift Valley that terminates in the shallow, brooding expanse of Lake Rukwa.

The bulk of Katavi supports a hypnotically featureless cover of tangled Brachystegia woodland, home to substantial but elusive populations of the localized eland, sable and roan antelopes. But the main focus for game viewing within the park is the Katuma River and associated floodplains such as the seasonal Lakes Katavi and Chada. During the rainy season, these lush, marshy lakes are a haven for myriad waterbirds, and they also support Tanzania’s densest concentrations of hippos and crocodiles.

It is during the dry season, when the floodwaters retreat, that Katavi truly comes into its own. The Katuma, reduced to a shallow, muddy trickle, forms the only source of drinking water for miles around, and the flanking floodplains support game concentrations that defy belief. An estimated 4,000 elephants might converge on the area, together with several herds of 1,000-plus buffalo, while an abundance of giraffe, zebra, impala, and reedbuck provide easy pickings for the numerous lion pride and spotted hyena clans whose territories converge on the floodplains.

Katavi’s most singular wildlife spectacle is provided by its hippos. Towards the end of the dry season, up to 200 individuals might flop together in any riverine pool of sufficient depth. And as more hippos gather in one place, so does male rivalry heats up – bloody territorial fights are an everyday occurrence, with the vanquished male forced to lurk hapless on the open plains until it gathers sufficient confidence to mount another challenge.

Mahale Mountains National Parks

Mahale Mountains National Parks

Mahale Mountains National Parks

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Mahale Mountains National Parks is Set deep in the heart of the African interior, inaccessible by road and only 100km (60 miles) south of where Stanley uttered that immortal greeting “Doctor Livingstone, I presume”, is a scene reminiscent of an Indian Ocean island beach idyll.

Silky white coves hem in the azure waters of Lake Tanganyika, overshadowed by a chain of wild, jungle-draped peaks towering almost 2km above the shore: the remote and mysterious Mahale Mountains.

Mahale Mountains, like its northerly neighbour Gombe Stream, is home to some of Africa’s last remaining wild chimpanzees: a population of roughly 800, habituated to human visitors by a Japanese research project founded in the 1960s. Tracking the chimps of Mahale is a magical experience. The guide’s eyes pick out last night’s nests – shadowy clumps high in a gallery of trees crowding the sky. Scraps of half-eaten fruit and fresh dung become valuable clues, leading deeper into the forest. Butterflies flit in the dappled sunlight.

Then suddenly you are in their midst: preening each other’s glossy coats in concentrated huddles, squabbling noisily, or bounding into the trees to swing effortlessly between the vines.

The area is also known as Nkungwe, after the park’s largest mountain, held sacred by the local Tongwe people, and at 2,460 metres (8,069 ft) the highest of the six prominent points that make up the Mahale Range.

And while chimpanzees are the star attraction, the slopes support a diverse forest fauna, including readily observed troops of red colobus, red-tailed and blue monkeys, and a kaleidoscopic array of colourful forest birds.

You can trace the Tongwe people’s ancient pilgrimage to the mountain spirits, hiking through the montane rainforest belt – home to an endemic race of Angola colobus monkey – to high grassy ridges chequered with alpine bamboo. Then bathe in the impossibly clear waters of the world’s longest, second-deepest and least-polluted freshwater lake – harbouring an estimated 1,000 fish species – before returning as you came, by boat.

Saadani National Park

Saadani National Park

Saadani National Park

TAILOR MADE SAFARI

Saadani National Park palm trees sway in a cooling oceanic breeze. White sand and blue water sparkle alluringly beneath the tropical sun. Traditional dhows sail slowly past, propelled by billowing white sails, while Swahili fishermen cast their nets below a brilliant red sunrise.

Saadani is where the beach meets the bush. The only wildlife sanctuary in East Africa to boast an Indian Ocean beachfront, it possesses all the attributes that make Tanzania’s tropical coastline and islands so popular with European sun-worshippers. Yet it is also the one place where those idle hours of sunbathing might be interrupted by an elephant strolling past, or a lion coming to drink at the nearby waterhole!

Protected as a game reserve since the 1960s, in 2002 it was expanded to cover twice its former area. The reserve suffered greatly from poaching prior to the late 1990s, but recent years have seen a marked turnaround, due to a concerted clampdown on poachers, based on integrating adjacent villages into the conservation drive.

Today, a surprisingly wide range of grazers and primates is seen on game drives and walks, among them giraffe, buffalo, warthog, common waterbuck, reedbuck, hartebeest, wildebeest, red duiker, greater kudu, eland, sable antelope, yellow baboon, and vervet monkey.
Herds of up to 30 elephants are encountered with increasing frequency, and several lion pride is resident, together with leopard, spotted hyena, and black-backed jackal. Boat trips on the mangrove-lined Wami River come with a high chance of sighting hippos, crocodiles, and a selection of marine and riverine birds, including the mangrove kingfisher and lesser flamingo, while the beaches form one of the last major green turtle breeding sites on mainland Tanzania.

Selous Game Reserve

Selous Game Reserve

Selous Game Reserve

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Selous Game Reserve has an area of more than 45,000 sq km, larger than many European countries, Selous is the largest game reserve in Africa. It is part of an extensive 155,000sqkms Selous Niassa ecosystem of uninhabited miombo woodland that extends between southern Tanzania and northern Mozambique. The reserve and the greater ecosystem lie at the core of the greatest surviving African wilderness, which supports a healthy and large wildlife population.

Selous ranks as one of East Africa’s most alluring and satisfying safari destinations. With a mere handful number of lodges in a vast 50,000sqkms wilderness, Selous offers one of Africa’s remotest, wildest, and untrammeled wilderness.

The reserve’s natural vegetation mostly consists of miombo woodland and is bisected into two disproportionate parts by Tanzania’s largest river- Rufiji, which runs through the reserve from west to east. Numerous narrow streams connect the Rufiji River to 5 pretty small lakes, and these are the areas that provide the best game-viewing opportunities in the dry months.

Besides the normal species, Selous is also famous for offering the unique opportunity of viewing rare and endangered species in large numbers. Mammals such as the African wild dog and the black Rhinoceros, which are completely extinct in other parks and very few in some, are found in healthy numbers in Selous. Another interesting feature of Selous compared to other parks in Africa is its lions. Not only do they have darker coats and less hirsute manes compared to their counterparts elsewhere in East Africa, but they evidently rely on an unusual opportunistic diurnal hunting strategy making Selous the best place for witnessing a lion kill.

Game Concentration
Wildlife in Selous is abundant and the areas by the river and small lakes provide the best viewing opportunities in the dry months. With elephants, buffalo, giraffes, zebras, and other antelopes numbering in the thousands, game-viewing activities are full of excitement and very rewarding.

Large predators include lions, leopards, wild dogs, and spotted hyenas. Other mammals include elephant, buffalo, giraffe, zebra, sable, roan, impala, bushbuck, waterbuck, wildebeest, greater kudu, puku, hartebeest, and eland. The rivers are full of hippos and crocodiles.

Selous also supports an abundant birdlife population. Some prominent species include yellow-billed stork, white-crowned and spur-winged plovers, various small waders, pied and malachite kingfishers, African skimmer, fish eagle, palm-nut vulture, carmine and white-throated bee-eater, trumpeter hornbill, purple-crested turaco, Malagasy squacco heron, and fishing owl.

Time to visit
Selous is practically impossible for game drives in the rainy season and some areas of the reserve are completely inaccessible. All the lodges close down their operations in the months of March and reopen in June. The best time to visit Selous is in the dry season between June and February.

Activities
Besides the normal game drives in 4×4 vehicles, the most interesting and equally rewarding activity are the boat rides along the Rufiji River. The gigantic crocodiles, the skull of hippos, the characteristic water birds along the river, and the herds of elephant, buffalo, and giraffes coming down for water together with a brilliant red sun setting behind the tall palm and baobab trees as a backdrop, makes these boat rides one of the most exciting experiences of your Selous safari.

Other activities include Hunting, guided walks with armed rangers close to nature and fly camping, which gives you the unique experience of sleeping next to the river and lakes and where the only thing that separates you from the close by hippo, crocodile, and lion- is a mosquito net!.

Accessibility
Selous is very accessible nowadays from most of the tourist points in Tanzania. Though the most convenient and viable way is flying, one can also reach the reserve by driving or by using the Tazara railway line. There are a number of short airstrips in the different parts of the reserve where light aircraft can land. A number of small aircraft operators provide daily schedules to Selous from Dar es Salaam, Zanzibar, Arusha, and other national parks.

Duration
Considering the logistics of the park, the important attractions, and the game viewing opportunities we suggest you spend at least 3 nights in Selous. This should provide you ample time to cover most of the important areas in the reserve. However, for those interested in fly camping and walking safaris, a few extra days will prove to be a good investment.

Recommendation
Selous definitely stands out amongst the game reserves that Africa has to offer in terms of abundant wildlife and untrammeled wilderness. And the fact that it is easily accessible from practically any tourist point in Tanzania, should make Selous a must-place to visit in your Tanzania safari program. A few days in this reserve will give you a very different experience of what Africa, out of its unlimited natural resources, can offer. This is indeed one destination that will prove to be worth every penny you spent.

Udzungwa Mountains National Park

Udzungwa Mountains National Park

Udzungwa Mountains National Park

TAILOR MADE SAFARI

Brooding and primeval, the forests of Udzungwa seem positively enchanted: a verdant refuge of sunshine-dappled glades enclosed by 30-meter (100-foot) high trees, their buttresses layered with fungi, lichens, mosses, and ferns.

Udzungwa is the largest and most biodiverse of a chain of a dozen large forest-swathed mountains that rise majestically from the flat coastal scrub of eastern Tanzania. Known collectively as the Eastern Arc Mountains, this archipelago of isolated massifs has also been dubbed the African Galapagos for its treasure-trove of endemic plants and animals, most familiarly the delicate African violet.

Udzungwa alone among the ancient ranges of the Eastern Arc has been accorded national park status. It is also unique within Tanzania in that its closed-canopy forest spans altitudes of 250 meters (820 feet) to above 2,000 meters (6,560 ft) without interruption.

Not a conventional game-viewing destination, Udzungwa is a magnet for hikers. An excellent network of forest trails includes the popular half-day ramble to Sanje Waterfall, which plunges 170 meters (550 feet) through a misty spray into the forested valley below.

The more challenging two-night Mwanihana Trail leads to the high plateau, with its panoramic views over surrounding sugar plantations, before ascending to Mwanihana Peak, the second-highest point in the range.

Ornithologists are attracted to Udzungwa for an avian wealth embracing more than 400 species, from the lovely and readily-located green-headed oriole to more than a dozen secretive Eastern Arc endemics.

Four bird species are peculiar to Udzungwa, including a forest partridge first discovered in 1991 and more closely related to an Asian genus than to any other African fowl.

Of six primate species recorded, the Iringa red colobus and Sanje Crested Mangabey both occur nowhere else in the world – the latter, remarkably, remained undetected by biologists prior to 1979.

Undoubtedly, this great forest has yet to reveal all its treasures: ongoing scientific exploration will surely add to its diverse catalogue of endemics.

About Udzungwa Mountains National Park
Size: 1,990 sq km (770 sq miles).
Location: Five hours (350 km/215 miles) from Dar es Salaam; 65 kms (40 miles) southwest of Mikumi.

Getting there
Drive from Dar es Salaam or Mikumi National Park.

What to do
From a two-hour hike to the waterfall to camping safaris.
Combine with nearby Mikumi or en route to Ruaha.

When to go
Possible year round although slippery in the rains.
The dry season is June-October before the short rains but be prepared for rain anytime.

Mikumi National Park

Mikumi National Park

Mikumi National Park

TAILOR MADE SAFARI

Swirls of opaque mist hide the advancing dawn. The first shafts of sun color the fluffy grass heads rippling across the plain in a russet halo. A herd of zebras, confident in their camouflage at this predatory hour, pose like ballerinas, heads aligned and stripes merging in flowing motion.

Mikumi National Park abuts the northern border of Africa’s biggest game reserve – the Selous – and is transected by the surfaced road between Dar es Salaam and Iringa. It is thus the most accessible part of a 75,000 square kilometer (47,000 square miles) tract of wilderness that stretches east almost as far as the Indian Ocean.

The open horizons and abundant wildlife of the Mkata Floodplain, the popular centerpiece of Mikumi, draw frequent comparisons to the more famous Serengeti Plains.

Lions survey their grassy kingdom – and the zebra, wildebeest, impala, and buffalo herds that migrate across it – from the flattened tops of termite mounds, or sometimes, during the rains, from perches high in the trees. Giraffes forage in the isolated acacia stands that fringe the Mkata River, islets of shade favored also by Mikumi’s elephants.

Criss-crossed by a good circuit of game-viewing roads, the Mkata Floodplain is perhaps the most reliable place in Tanzania for sightings of the powerful eland, the world’s largest antelope. The equally impressive greater kudu and sable antelope haunt the miombo-covered foothills of the mountains that rise from the park’s borders.

More than 400 bird species have been recorded, with such colorful common residents as the lilac-breasted roller, yellow-throated longclaw, and bateleur eagle joined by a host of European migrants during the rainy season. Hippos are the star attraction of the pair of pools situated 5km north of the main entrance gate, supported by an ever-changing cast of waterbirds.

About Mikumi National Park
Size: 3,230 sq km (1,250 sq miles), the fourth-largest park in Tanzania, and part of a much larger ecosystem centered on the uniquely vast Selous Game Reserve.
Location: 283 km (175 miles) west of Dar es Salaam, north of Selous, and en route to Ruaha, Udzungwa, and (for the intrepid) Katavi.

How to get there
A well-surfaced road connects Mikumi to Dar es Salaam via Morogoro, a roughly 4-hour drive.
Also road connections to Udzungwa, Ruaha, and (dry season only) Selous.
Charter flight from Dar es Salaam, Arusha, or Selous. Local buses run from Dar to park HQ where game drives can be arranged.

What to do
Game drives and guided walks. Visit nearby Udzungwa or travel on to Selous or Ruaha.

When to go
Accessible year-round.

Ruaha National Park

Ruaha National Park

Ruaha National Park

TAILOR MADE SAFARI

Ruaha National Park is the game viewing starts the moment the plane touches down. A giraffe races beside the airstrip, all legs, and neck, yet oddly elegant in its awkwardness. A line of zebras parades across the runway in the giraffe’s wake.

In the distance, beneath a bulbous baobab tree, a few representatives of Ruaha’s 10,000 elephants – the largest population of any East African national park, form a protective huddle around their young.

Second only to Katavi in its aura of untrammeled wilderness, but far more accessible, Ruaha protects a vast tract of the rugged, semi-arid bush country that characterizes central Tanzania. Its lifeblood is the Great Ruaha River, which courses along the eastern boundary in a flooded torrent during the height of the rains, but dwindling thereafter to a scattering of precious pools surrounded by a blinding sweep of sand and rock.

A fine network of game-viewing roads follows the Great Ruaha and its seasonal tributaries, where, during the dry season, impala, waterbuck, and other antelopes risk their life for a sip of life-sustaining water. And the risk is considerable: not only from the pride of 20-plus lions that lord over the savannah but also from the cheetahs that stalk the open grassland and the leopards that lurk in tangled riverine thickets. This impressive array of large predators is boosted by both striped and spotted hyenas, as well as several conspicuous packs of the highly endangered African wild dog.

Ruaha’s unusually high diversity of antelope is a function of its location, which is transitional to the acacia savannah of East Africa and the miombo woodland belt of Southern Africa. Grant’s gazelle and lesser kudu occur here at the very south of their range, alongside the miombo-associated sable and roan antelope, and one of East Africa’s largest populations of greater kudu, the park emblem, distinguished by the male’s magnificent corkscrew horns.

A similar duality is noted in the checklist of 450 birds: the likes of crested barbet, an attractive yellow-and-black bird whose persistent trilling is a characteristic sound of the southern bush, occur in Ruaha alongside central Tanzanian endemics such as the yellow-collared lovebird and ashy starling.