Lake Manyara National Park

Nestled beneath the dramatic 600-meter-high western escarpment of the Great Rift Valley, Lake Manyara National Park was famously praised by Ernest Hemingway as 'the loveliest I had seen in Africa.' Despite its compact 330-square-kilometer size, the park compresses an astonishing diversity of micro-habitats into a narrow wilderness strip.

Visitors enter through a lush groundwater forest fed by permanent underground springs, where hundreds of baboons, blue monkeys, and hornbills thrive under ancient fig and mahogany trees. As the forest opens into acacia savannah, travelers search the sprawling branches of umbrella acacias for Lake Manyara's famous tree-climbing lions, an unusual behavioral adaptation shared only with Queen Elizabeth National Park in Uganda.

The shallow alkaline lake covers up to two-thirds of the park during the wet season, providing a feeding ground for vast pink clouds of lesser flamingos, pelicans, storks, and over 400 other bird species. A scenic treetop canopy walkway suspended 18 meters above the forest floor allows guests to experience the birdlife and monkeys from a bird's-eye perspective.