Tourist Attractions In Arusha National Park

Arusha National Park is small (584 km²) but exhilarating, which makes it an ideal destination for wildlife lovers with tight schedules. Here you are able to see large amounts of wildlife such as elephants, Cape buffalo, hippos and zebras, with some lions and leopards.

It’s Piedmont yet only a few kilometers from Arusha town in northern Tanzania, so very easy to get to. The park is celebrated for its bountiful wildlife and it is also home to the largest giraffe population in the world. On a game drive here, you might spot Cape buffalo, elephants, hippos, and zebras, with lions and leopards being a fairly common sighting.

When you get to Arusha town, you don’t need to go any further to be in the heart of the African wilderness. Among the options available are canoeing, walking safaris and game drives—and there’s no better place to begin or end any safari in northern Tanzania, for instance, with a Ngorongoro Crater tour.

Arusha National Park is also among the more accessible parks in Tanzania, which makes it a great choice for a day trip and easy to incorporate into any Tanzanian travel itinerary. The park comprises a variety of habitats, including open grasslands, rainforests, acacia forests and alpine flora at the summit of Mount Meru. The park’s system consists of Mount Meru’s lower slopes, the mountain’s peak and ash cone, the Momella Lakes, Ngurdoto Crater and rich, verdant highland forests. The main attractions of Arusha National Park are listed below:

Wildlife and birds

Animals

Arusha National Park is a great stop if you are going on a wildlife safari in northern Tanzania. The park contains several animals to be found in swarms around the park, including the Ngurudoto. The crater, named Small Ngorongoro, momella lakes shore and Plains in Savannah, which includes the Serengeti Ndogo (Little Serengeti) and Ujamboo Wa Mbogo, which converts to “buffaloes’ glade,” In addition. Tourists can observe a wide range of animals, including giraffes, waterbucks, dik-diks, duikers, zebras, leopards, lions, spotted hyenas, elephants, bush pigs, red duikers, warthogs, hippos, black and white colobus monkeys, blue monkeys and so much more.

Birds

This is an excellent place to bird in Tanzania, with more than 400 species recorded here so far. The mix of birds is wide and varied. It comprises forest and birds of prey, waterfowl, and migratory and vagrant species. The common ostrich, white-faced and fulvous whistling ducks, grey crowned crane, red-knobbed coot, lesser and greater flamingos, Hartlieb’s bustard, goliath heron and montane nightjar are some of the birds that can be found in Arusha National Park.

There are more: maccoa duck, pink-backed pelican, red-eyed dove, woolly-necked stork, black heron, black-faced sandgrouse, Egyptian goose, dwarf bittern, African swift, Shelley’s francolin, vulturine guineafowl, yellow-throated sandgrouse, hamerkop, coqui francolin, little swift, great egret, ring-necked dove, black-bellied bustard, European nightjar, black-headed heron, helmeted guineafowl, little bittern, red-chested flufftail, common swift, intermediate egret, African green pigeon, saddle-billed stork, crested francolin, crested guineafowl, grey heron, European white stork, cattle egret, laughing dove, abdim’s stork, sombre nightjar, and Nyanza swift, among others.

Mount Meru

Mount Meru is an additional destination for visitors to Arusha National Park if wildlife is not enough. It’s located in the park and is Tanzania’s second highest mountain after Kilimanjaro. It’s also the fifth highest mountain in Africa. Mount Meru is a dormant volcano and rises 4,562 meters high.

On good days you can see for miles from Kilimanjaro, which is taller. Climbing Mount Meru is a fantastic experience because there are none of the crowds and traffic on Tanganyika. Jol is my favourite flavour route and the greatest producer. There is some massive wildlife abounding along the way.

Hikes to the summit normally take about four days to get to the top; this is the so-called “social peak.” however, are able to scale it in just three days. Mount Meru, on the other hand, does not often get covered with ice or clouds, meaning that it can be seen throughout the entire year.

The climb can be hard and exhausting, but it’s definitely worth it. The trail at Kilimanjaro Lake is not for the fainthearted but is very beautiful. The summit offers an amazing view of Kilimanjaro, and the trail itself is like a walking safari through different environments. As you travel along, you may also spot giraffes, elephants, antelopes, and other wildlife alike. It’s a grueling journey, but it provides a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to experience the natural world and adventure at the same time.

Momella Lakes

Momella Lakes in Arusha is among the best and most exciting safaris in this region found in the northeastern part of Arusha National Park. There are seven beautiful lakes, which include the big Momella Lake and some smaller ones such as Kusare, Lekandihro, Tulusia and Kkotoito.

These lakes are alkaline, which normally would prevent anything from living in the lake, but the meal that the flamingos eat makes the waters of these lakes a home for flamingos; visitors often have the chance to see the lesser and the greater flamingos in their natural habitat. Apart from birdwatching, visitors can also canoe on the lakes—a rare pastime allowed within a national park.

In the course of these canoe safaris, you can approach the park’s wildlife and catch breathtaking views of Mount Meru and Mount Kilimanjaro, making for an unforgettable experience. When kayaking on Momella Lake, you are usually accompanied by a guide and a born‐paddler, which makes the RIDE More secure and longer. You also can kayak on Lake Duluti and Lake Manyara. In addition, birders have the chance to see pelicans, African fish hawks, falcons, and hawks when they visit Arusha National Park.

The Mini Serengeti

The Mini Serengeti, also known as the “Little Serengeti,” is a further highlight of Arusha National Park. It serves as a sanctuary for grazing animals such as zebras that are unable to browse in thick vegetation and also helps with animal visibility. Since Slopes of Arusha are largely covered by forest and shrubs, it is not a very conducive place for grazing animals, so there is not much to see as far as wildlife viewing is concerned here.

The Mini Serengeti was created specifically to address this issue. Now, Arusha National Park’s Little Serengeti is a wide expanse of grassland dotted by animals including elephants, giraffes, buffaloes, zebras, warthogs and waterbucks. It’s probably the first place you stop at when you drive into the park from the Ngongongare gate; you come off the road to Momella.

Animals congregate in this grassland in the morning but are less numerous during midday. Is one of the few open grasslands left in the park and the size of it, along with the number of animals, gives you a glimpse of the Serengeti plains.

Ngurudoto Crater

The Ngurudoto Crater is the largest of five spectacular volcanic calderas in northeastern Tanzania’s Arusha region. It is a similar formation to the much larger and famous Ngorongoro, Maasai, Empakaai and Olmoti craters. It is some three hundred meters deep and about 3.2 kilometers wide. The floor of Ngurudoto is softer and deemed off-limits for vehicles, so visitors mainly walk inside on walking safaris. Around the rim of the crater, there is a thick rainforest teeming with wildlife, so this is one of the best places to get close to wild animals in Africa and in a natural habitat.

Ngurudoto Museum

The Ngurudoto Museum has been established specifically to exhibit the various life forms found in the Ngurudoto crater. It features taxidermied animals, bones and other artifacts related to those species. This is a nice introduction to the wildlife before you head down to the crater itself. The museum also has a gift shop, clean, modern restrooms, a small parking lot, and a ranger station with living quarters. Visitors often come across colobus monkeys, baboons, and a few birds in this region.

Fig Tree Arch

Fig Tree Arch in Arusha national park is one of the surprises of nature; here grows a tree that has bent and formed into an arch large enough for a tree or an elephant to walk beneath. That’s why it’s such a wonderful photo-op location since you can shoot it from multiple positions, like from under the arch or with your safari vehicle in the background. We saw the Fig Tree which had grown from the parasitic tree dropped by foraging birds—it is visited on a Tanzania hiking safari to the Tululusia waterfalls.

Tululusia Hill and waterfall

Tululusia, meaning “lookout point,” the Tululusia hill is indeed a vantage point that overlooks most of what resides in the lower portions of the Arusha National Park, the Mount Meru and the Kilimanjaro that is awe-inspiring. Tululusia Waterfall cascades into a labaid (a dry upland) in a gorge—a valley created through the erosion of soft volcanic soil—plunging from a height of 28M (84ft). It’s a nest with Red-winged Starlings, and your chance of getting your shots in this natural setup is usually excellent!

Uwanja wa mbogo (buffaloes’ glade)

Buffalo’s glade is a little clearing just to the west of the Momella gate on the northeastern side of arusha national park. It is at the foot of Mount Meru and is one of the first places that hikers to its peak get to see, assuming they started hiking at the gate. The glade is a magnet for such animals as the buffaloes, giraffes and warthogs to gather and graze.

It is also popular with visitors on foot safaris to get an up-close viewing of the wildlife. One of the most intriguing aspects of the glades is the harmony in which buffaloes and warthogs cohabitate. they depend on each other for survival: warthogs alarm the buffalo of approaching danger.

When warthogs sniff out a danger, they run for their lives with their tails pointing straight up in the air, which also warns the buffalo in the surrounding area. This is something you often see while running towards the glade. On top of that, buffaloes graze on tall grass, which leaves it short, making it simpler for warthogs—who are accustomed to eating on their knees—to get a meal.

Ngarenanyuki River (Engare Nanyokie)

This river originating from the montane forest and Meru crater holds a brackish outcome of a brown/alkaline water source from the springs, which drain into the river outside the park.