 |
|
|
|
|
|
Ruaha National Park is one of Tanzania's
best kept secrets! It's previous inaccessibility means
that this park has remained unchanged for centuries and
offers the type of wild safari that early explorers were
privy to. Ruaha is a visually stunning park with an undulating
plateau about 900m with occasional rocky outcrops and
mountains reaching heights of 1900m. Running though the
park are “sand rivers” which dry up completely
in the dry season and act as roads for the game to move
from waterhole to waterhole. Ruaha National Park covers
an area of about 6,400 miles² (10.300 km²) in
the central/southern highlands of Tanzania. It is the
country's second biggest park, gazetted in 1964 and is
a one and a half-hour flight from Dar es Salaam or a 10-hour
drive.
Although the eastern camps get
full during the high season, Ruaha does not experience
visitor numbers like its more illustrious neighbours in
the north of the country. Large sections of the park are
unexplored and during much of the year you will have the
place to yourself. Bordered on the east by the Great Ruaha
River and the west by Mzombe River, visitors are struck
its the beauty and vast expanse of wilderness stretching
down towards the hazy blue hills of the Southern Highlands.
The terrain is varied and fascinating with wild fig trees,
rare baobab forests and gorges of glowing orange sandstone.
The rivers contain swirling rapids and deep pools inhabited
by crocodiles and hippos
|
|
| Best
time to visit Ruaha National Park |
 |
|
|
|
The best time to visit is
between July and November when the animals congregate
around the water holes, but the park is stunning
all year round. Their cover is blown during the
dry season (May to December), when the foliage dies
down and animals become easier to see. Twice a year
in March/April and October/November, Eurasian migrating
birds arrive to boost the
|
 |
|
|
already high numbers of exotic
and colorful species in this park. We recommend spending
a minimum of three days at Ruaha. Ruaha National Park
is a good place for seeing Lion, Buffalo, Elephant and
Painted Dog (African Wild Dog). Grants gazelle, ostrich
and cheetah may be seen on the plains.
Ruaha National Park has recently been combined with the
Usanga Game Reserve making the largest National Park in
Africa covering over 15,000 sq km. This new park itself
is at the heart of a much larger ecosystem covering over
40,000 sq km. The highlights of a trip to Ruaha is watching
the huge elephant herds (the greatest concentration in
Africa) gathered around the mighty Ruaha River; the lifeblood
of the park.
|
|
| Ruaha Wildlife &
Birdlife Attractions |
 |
 |
|
Ruaha is a permanent
hunting ground for lions, jackals, hyenas and the
rare and beautifully marked wild dogs. They prey on
zebras and numerous antelopes, with both the stunning
roan and sable antelope found here as well as greater
and lesser kudu. There are also thousands of elephants
and buffalo. Ruaha National Park's unusually high
|
diversity of antelope is a function
of its location, which is transitional to the acacia savannah
of East Africa and the miombo woodland belt of Southern
Africa. Grant's gazelle and lesser kudu occur here at the
very south of their range, alongside the miombo-associated
sable and roan antelope, and one of East Africa's largest
populations of greater kudu, the park emblem, distinguished
by the male's magnificent corkscrew horns. Eurasian migrating
birds flock to Ruaha twice a year (March/April and October/November)
to join the already high number of resident species like
kingfishers, hornbills, egrets, shimmering sunbirds and
plovers.
A similar duality is noted in the checklist of 450 birds:
the likes of crested barbet, an attractive yellow-and-black
bird whose persistent trilling is a characteristic sound
of the southern bush, occur in Ruaha National Park alongside
central Tanzanian endemics such as the yellow-collared lovebird
and ashy starling. |
|
| Ruaha
National Park - Accessibility |
|
|
 |
| In Ruaha National Park,
fine network of game-viewing roads follows the Great Ruaha
and its seasonal tributaries, where , during the dry season,
impala, waterbuck and other antelopes risk their life for
a sip of life-sustaining water. And the risk is considerable:
not only from the prides of 20-plus lion that lord over
the savannah, but also from the cheetahs that stalk the
open grassland and the leopards that lurk in tangled riverine
thickets. This impressive array of large predators is boosted
by both striped and spotted hyena, as well as several conspicuous
packs of the highly endangered African wild dog. |
|
| Further
Information and Booking a Visit |
|
|
|
| Memorable visits to
the Ruaha National Park are featured within various Tanzania
safari itineraries featured in this site. We have a wide
range of carefully designed tours and safaris to Ruaha National
Park Tanzania that will reveal to you the true meaning of
an African wildlife safari to Southern Tanzania. Your safari
consultant will always be at your assistance should you
need a tailor-made holiday to this location. For more information
regarding this attraction, please DO NOT hesitate to contact
us. |
|
| |
| RELATED
LINKS |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
