Lake Manyara National Park

Lake Manyara is a small park - at 330 km² it can be covered in a half day - but it packs an outsized punch. The park's most famous residents are the tree-climbing lions, which are regularly seen draped in the branches of mahogany and acacia trees. The behaviour is unusual and not fully understood, but theories include avoiding tsetse flies, escaping the heat, and getting a better vantage to spot prey. Whatever the reason, a lion in a tree is one of those images that makes a safari.

The lake itself is one of the most important bird sanctuaries in East Africa. Hundreds of thousands of lesser flamingos congregate at the alkaline shoreline between November and April, and the lake also hosts pelicans, storks, kingfishers, and over 400 recorded bird species. The water is shallow and warm - hippos wallow along the edge, and a hippo-viewing platform is one of the best places in Tanzania to watch them from a safe distance.

The entrance to the park is one of the most spectacular in Africa: a sunken road runs through a dense groundwater forest of fig trees, mahogany, and wild mango. Elephants and troops of baboons forage in the understorey, and it's common to have a sighting within the first ten minutes of entering the park. After the forest, the road emerges into open grassland that backs up to the Rift Valley escarpment - a wall of green rising 600 m above the lake.

Lake Manyara works well as a half-day visit on the way to the Ngorongoro Crater, or as a one-night stop. It's also one of the few parks where night game drives are permitted, opening up the chance to see bushbaby, civet, and porcupine.