Per person, land only. Park fees included where noted.
Arusha National Park sits 32 kilometres from Arusha town and about 40 from Kilimanjaro International Airport, which makes it the one serious park you can do properly in a day. It was gazetted in 1960 as Ngurdoto Crater National Park, at 322 square kilometres; Mount Meru was annexed later, and before any of that the land ran as a ranch from 1907. It now sits inside the Arusha-Meru Aspiring UNESCO Global Geopark.
We enter at Momella Gate. Park fees are paid here, and East African citizens pay a fraction of the non-resident rate – we handle it either way.
Morning: The walking safari is the reason to come. This is one of very few Tanzanian parks where you are permitted on foot, and you walk with an armed ranger because that is the law here, not theatre. TANAPA maintains six designated walking trails; the ones we use most run from Momella Gate to Itikoni, Kitoto and Njeku viewpoints, or out to Tululusia Waterfall.
Tululusia drops 28 metres off the slope of Meru and you hear it well before you reach it. There is a cool, wet clearing at the base where people tend to stay longer than they planned.
What you walk through: Serengeti Ndogo – Little Serengeti – is open grassland that genuinely resembles the big plains in miniature, holding buffalo, warthog, zebra, waterbuck and giraffe in the open. Uwanja wa Mbogo, the Buffalo Glade, is marsh and stream and bush where buffalo and warthog spend the day grazing lightly and wallowing in the mud holes to cool down and shed parasites.
There are no lion here and elephant are rare. That absence is exactly what makes walking possible, and it changes what you notice – tracks, dung beetles, birds, the smell of crushed leaves.
Midday: The Momella Lakes. Volcanic in origin and fed by underground streams, and because each lake carries a different mineral load each supports different algae – which is why they are visibly different colours from one another. Canoeing is permitted on the smaller lakes and is one of the only places in northern Tanzania it is allowed. From the water you get hippo, waterbuck, occasionally an elephant coming out of the vegetation at the edge, and a great deal of water birdlife.
Lake Longil is the park’s only freshwater lake – tilapia, water birds, papyrus and water lilies – and a different proposition entirely from the alkaline Momella chain.
Picnic lunch by the water, with Meru above you and, on a clear day, Kilimanjaro on the eastern horizon.
Afternoon: Ngurdoto Crater. A pear-shaped volcano rising to 1,853 metres with a summit crater 3 to 4 kilometres across and 360 metres deep – a miniature Ngorongoro, and you look down into it rather than drive in. Five viewing points ring it: Mikindu, the Rock, Buffalo, the Glade, and Leitong, which is the highest. From Leitong on a clear day you get Kilimanjaro’s snow, the Momella lakes and the whole lower slope in one view.
The forest around the crater is dense and varied and it is the reliable place for black-and-white colobus – troops in the canopy with their tails hanging.
On the way out we stop at the Fig Tree Arch: a Ficus thoningii whose roots have reached the ground and left an arch wide enough to drive a vehicle through.
Meru itself: Big Meru, Socialist Peak, stands at 4,566 metres, with Little Meru at 3,800. The ash cone inside the caldera is a pyramid-shaped cinder cone rising more than 1,000 metres off the crater floor, formed after the eastern wall collapsed; the last known lava flow was around 1910 and the evidence is still visible on its north-western side. You see all of this from the park without climbing any of it.
Fitness: the walk is two to three hours at an easy pace on flat ground. Anyone in reasonable health manages it.
Park rules worth knowing: a valid permit is required, the speed limit inside is 50 km/h, feeding or disturbing animals is prohibited, and you may only enter and leave at the gates stated on your permit.
Also available here: horse riding safaris, and mountain cycling on the designated forest trails from Momella Gate up via Miriakamba toward Big Meru. Ask if either interests you and we will price it.