Four-day adventure Tarangire National Park, Ngorongoro Crater, and Materuni Falls
four-day adventure to some of Tanzania’s most sought-after destinations, including Tarangire National Park, Ngorongoro Crater, and Materuni Falls. Tanzania is a country situated in East Africa, renowned for its vast wilderness areas. Serengeti National Park, for example, is a safari destination teeming with the “big five” species (elephant, lion, leopard, buffalo, and rhino), while Kilimanjaro National Park is home to Africa’s highest mountain. Zanzibar and Mafia are two tropical islands off the coast, with Arabic influences and a marine park where whale sharks and coral reefs can be found.
With the assistance of a knowledgeable driver guide, your journey begins and ends in Arusha. The Tarangire National Park, named after the Tarangire River, is the first destination. The park’s fauna and birdlife are sustained by the river, which runs through the center of the park year-round. During the dry season, a significant number of different animal species congregate here, making it an ideal location to photograph them. The natural environment consists primarily of Acacia woodland and massive African Baobab trees, with vast marsh areas in the south. Tarangire National Park is known to have some of Africa’s largest elephant herds, and it is possible to witness tree climbing African pythons.
Next up is the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, which includes large areas of highland plains, savanna, savanna woods, and forests. The stunning Ngorongoro Crater, the world’s biggest crater, is located here. Established in 1959 as a varied land use area with wildlife living with semi-nomadic Maasai pastoralists conducting traditional cattle grazing, the area is of global importance for biodiversity conservation due to the presence of internationally vulnerable species, the abundance of wildlife, and the annual migration of wildebeest, zebra, gazelles, and other animals onto the northern plains. Extensive archaeological research has also provided considerable evidence of human evolution and human-environment dynamics, including 3.6 million-year-old hominid footprints.
Finally, the highest waterfall on the Kilimanjaro slopes, Materuni waterfall, is located in the Moshi area and rises to a height of more than 150 meters. The waterfall is surrounded by farms and dense rainforest. Materuni village is the last village before entering Kilimanjaro National Park and is situated at an elevation of around 1800 meters. On your way to Materuni, you’ll pass coffee, banana, and avocado fields all set in a tropical jungle. On a clear day, you can see all the way to Kibo caldera and all the way down to Moshi.
