The wall the park is pinned against
Lake Manyara National Park is a strip of land between a shallow alkaline lake and the western wall of the Great Rift Valley. TANAPA names that wall among the park’s attractions in plain terms: the Rift Valley escarpment, which forms the high stone wall to the west of the park.
It is not a viewpoint in the ordinary sense — you are underneath it rather than on it for the whole of a game drive — and it is easy to treat as background. It is in fact the reason the park works.
Why the escarpment produces the park
Water. The wall intercepts groundwater moving through the highlands above, and copious springs emerge at its base at the park’s northern end. TANAPA describes the resulting dense evergreen groundwater forest as supplied by underground rivers, springs and streams — a genuinely jungle-like stand of tall figs and mahoganies, holding monkeys, baboons, bushbuck and forest birds, standing immediately beside dry acacia country and an open soda lake.
That juxtaposition is Manyara’s whole proposition. TANAPA counts seven distinct habitats within a thirty-kilometre stretch of the park: groundwater forest, acacia woodland, grassland, escarpment wall, lake floodplain, rain forest and riverine woodland. The escarpment is both one of the seven and the cause of several of the others.
Higher up the wall in the south-west lies the Marang forest, which TANAPA describes as an evergreen rain forest of about 230 square kilometres with a canopy hung with ferns, mosses and lichens, holding elephant, buffalo, duiker, baboon, blue monkey and leopard. A guided hike up to Marang via the Iyambi River is among the walks the park offers by prior arrangement — see walking safaris.
Looking at it, and looking from it
From inside the park the escarpment is a continuous forested and rocky wall rising along the western side, best seen in early light when the sun is on it. The park’s canopy walkway in the groundwater forest, which TANAPA gives as 18 metres above the forest floor, puts you among the trees growing off the bottom of it.
From above, the view is the other way. The main road from Mto wa Mbu up towards Karatu and Ngorongoro climbs the escarpment, and a great many of the beds serving Manyara are on the rim, looking down over the park and the lake on the valley floor. The small airport serving the park is also on the rim.
That is the practical point for trip design: the classic Manyara view is from the road and the lodges above the park, not from inside it, and it costs nothing but a stop on the way up.
Common questions
Can you climb the Manyara escarpment?
Not as a park activity in its own right. TANAPA offers a guided hike up to the Marang forest via the Iyambi River in the south by prior arrangement, and the main road climbs the escarpment north of the park.
Why is there rainforest next to a soda lake?
Groundwater from the highlands emerges as springs at the base of the escarpment and feeds the evergreen forest at the park’s northern end, regardless of the season.
Where is the best view of the escarpment?
From inside the park in early light, and from the road and the accommodation on the rim above, which look down over the park and the lake.