A tree you drive through
The Fig Tree Arch stands on a forest track in Arusha National Park. TANAPA describes it as a striking feature: a fig, Ficus thoningii, whose roots have reached the ground while leaving behind an arch wide enough for a car to drive through.
The species is a strangler fig. It germinates in the canopy of a host tree, sends roots down to the ground, and gradually envelops and outlives the host. What is left, when the host has gone, is a hollow lattice of fused root — in this case one that happens to span a track.
One feature, two official names
TANAPA calls the same thing the Fig Tree Arch in its park brochure and the Magic Fig Tree on its website. Both names appear in the authority’s own material and refer to the same feature, which is worth knowing when reading an itinerary that uses one and a map that uses the other.
What a stop is like, honestly
Short. It is a photograph, and the photograph is the point: a vehicle framed inside a living tree is an unusual picture and it takes about ten minutes to get.
Nothing else happens here. There is no trail, no interpretation, no facility and no view. It sits on the forest track in the park’s interior and it is reached in the course of a game drive rather than visited in its own right. Anyone who has been told it is one of the park’s main attractions has been oversold something that is genuinely charming and genuinely brief.
What makes it worth the stop is the forest it stands in. Arusha’s montane forest is the reason this park is, in TANAPA’s own words, probably the best place in Tanzania to watch black-and-white colobus monkeys, and the trees around the arch are the same habitat — see primate watching and forest walks.
Where it fits
The arch is on the game-viewing network rather than on the park’s six walking trails, so it is a driving stop. It works naturally into a circuit that also takes in Ngurdoto Crater and the Momella lakes, which is what a half day in this park generally consists of.
Off-road driving is restricted in the park and drones need prior authorisation. The park gates are Ngongongare, Ngurdoto, Momella and Kitoto, with TANAPA naming Ngongongare near Usa River as the main access. See game drives.
Common questions
Can you really drive through it?
TANAPA describes the arch as large enough for a car to drive through, and vehicles do. Whether a particular vehicle fits on a particular day is a question for the guide.
Is it the same as the Magic Fig Tree?
Yes. TANAPA’s brochure calls it the Fig Tree Arch and its website calls it the Magic Fig Tree. They are the same feature.
How long does it take?
About ten minutes. It is a photograph stop on a game drive, not a destination in its own right.