Saadani National Park
Saadani National Park is Tanzania’s youngest national park, covering more than 1,200 square kilometers in the east of the country, north of Dar es Salaam about 150 kilometers drive via Mandera and Mkange villages.
The Park has the distinction of being the only coastal wildlife sanctuary of its kind on the eastern coast of Africa. It offers a completely unique safari environment, combining that most rare of recipes–river, bush and beach. The extraordinary Wami River which is impressive because in the peak of the country’s hot summer the river still has a decent flow of water. Wami river forms the southern boundary of the Park.
From the open sea, you can boat into the river mouth and within minutes you are passing pods of hippo and basking crocodiles. The game is plentiful in the inland bush, elephants, bush-baby, lions, giraffes and other predators and preys jousting with a wide range of plains animals. The entire eastern boundary of the Park is set along the Indian Ocean where white beaches stretch to the horizon in both directions, and sand islands off-shore provide good snorkeling and swimming.
Saadani is also enrich with birdlife and mostly they are typical of the wetter coastal plain and more than 300 species are recorded they includes, desert cisticolas, yellow-throated longclaw, African pipits, red-necked spurfowl and helmeted guineafowl among to mention.
Kitulo Plateau National Park
Kitulo which has recently become a fully protected national Park, is situated on the Kitulo Plateau, which forms part of Tanzania’s southern highlands. The area, which is known locally as the “GARDEN OF GOD” provides as home for a wide variety of wildflowers (over 350 species of plants documented to date) such us balsams, bellflowers, honey-peas, irises, lilies and orchids.
The plateau is also home to some important bird species including endangered blue swallow, Denham’s, bustard, mountain marsh widow, Njombe cisticola and Kiperenge seedeater. Some of the world’s rarest butterflies also inhabit in he area along with chameleon, lizard, frogs, and few hardy redbuck and eland.