RUAHA NATIONAL PARK

For more information contact the Dar es Salaam Tourism Office, Tel (022) 212 0373/213 1555 - Fax: (022) 211 6420 - www.tanzaniatouristboard.com - [email protected] (see «Dar's Practice»). Created in 1964. 12 950 km 2, west of Iringa. Altitude: between 750 m and 1 900 m. This third largest park in Tanzania, 13 times greater than the Maasaï Mara in Kenya, for example, erected as a hunting reserve from 1910, was attached to the Réserve reserve, which was the same size as it. It holds its name (in hehe language, the region's ethnicity) of the river, which forms on 160 km its entire limit, and which flows into the Rufiji. Unfortunately, three large rice plantations take much of the water on the plains of Usangu, north-east of Mbeya where the river has its sources. The Ruaha is certainly the most beautiful park in the country, and therefore the most beautiful and wild in the world. It is also, with the Selous, the most important elephant sanctuaries. Far from everything, it is still very little visited: less than 1 000 visitors per year… All this helps make this park a place reserved for elite tourism, at least from a financial perspective.

Wildlife is absolutely exceptional: in addition to the classic lions, leopards, cheetahs, elephants (more than 6 000, while there were only 3 000 in 1985, and 16 000 in the region's ecosystem), hippos, crocodiles, giraffes, buffalo (35 000), guibs harnachés and other élans, it is almost easy to see large and small koudous, black hippotragues, rouannes antelopes, oryx, yellow baboons, lycaons and many others, without forgetting 370 bird species (more than 460 according to some), 38 fish species and 1 650 different plants… The vegetation, dotted with kopjes, is very varied from one place to another in the park: miombo (dry and fairly dense wood of Brachystegia), baobabs, palm trees and savanna trees in the plains, acacias along rivers, fig sauvages, Commiphora… For an interesting visit, start by walk (west side) the Ruaha River, then the Mwagusi and Mdonya Sandrivers; a loop is even possible, along between these two sandrivers the north-west escarpment (which is about metres high) on the side of the Mwayembe wetlands. A stay of about one week is recommended. The best season for the visit is from late June to early December. It rains from December to April. In general, it is warmer than the northern highlands. Attention to tsé flies, very present in places, but to which one owes the park's wild wealth, the flocks and the absence of the human installation…