Tarangire National Park

Game-viewing

During the dry season, huge herds of elephants, elands, oryx, zebras, buffalo, wildebeest, eland, giraffe, and impala roam the park. Hippos are plentiful and pythons can sometimes be seen in trees near the swamps. If you want to spot waterbuck or the mini-giraffe, the gerenuk, head for the Mkungero Pools. Tarangire is much more densely wooded than Serengeti with acacia, mixed woodland, and the ubiquitous baobab trees, although you'll find grasslands on the southern plains where cheetahs hunt.

There are more than 500 species of birds in Tarangire National Park, including martial and bateleur eagles. Especially good bird-watching can be had along the wetlands of the Silale Swamp and around the Tarangire River. Yellow-collared lovebirds, hammerkops, helmeted guinea fowl, long-toed lapwings, brown parrots, white-bellied go-away birds, and a variety of kingfishers, weavers, owls, plovers, and sandpipers make their homes here. A shallow alkaline lake attracts flamingos and pelicans in the rainy season. Raptors are plentiful including the palm-nut vulture and lots of eagles. You may hear a cry that sounds quite similar to the American Bald Eagle, but is in fact its look-alike cousin the African Fish eagle.

Ancient Art

Kolo, just south of Tarangire, is where you'll find some of the most accessible Kondoa rock paintings. From the last stage of the Stone Age, these illustrations on cave walls depict hunting scenes using stylized human and animal figures. These fragile documents of an era long past were studied by Mary Leakey, who wrote a book about them called Africa's Vanishing Art. At a nearby site Leakey discovered "pencils" in which ocher and other pigments had been ground and mixed with grease. Later excavations revealed that some were 29,000 years old. Tanzania National Parks, Box 3134, Arusha 027/250-1930 www.tanzaniaparks.com Weekdays 9-5, Sat. 9-noon $35