THE CONQUEST OF MOUNT KILIMANJARO

TANZANIA

Since the middle of the twentieth century, the word ‘Tanzania’ has been used to denote the sum of two former colonies: Tanganyika and the island of Zanzibar ‒ two very different universes which surprise the visitor with their contrasting landscapes and with the love of Nature that they share.

Tanzania is a landscape from another world. The countless birds that fly over it make it a paradise for ornithologists. It contains the curious Lake Natron, whose waters have a peculiar fuchsia colour, due to a particular cyanobacterium which serves as food for the flamencos and gives their plumage its singular chroma of pink. There is also the semi-saltwater Lake Eyasi, which attracts the hippopotamuses so much, and the Serengeti National Park, the best observatory on the Planet for watching lions, hippopotamuses, antelopes, giraffes, elephants and all the animals you can imagine from the African savannah.

Also in Tanzania is the Ngorongoro crater, an accident of Nature measuring twenty kilometres in diameter, and whose area of three hundred square kilometres has enclosed wild fauna that it would not otherwise have been possible to see. There is also the Tarangire National Park, with its multitude of reptiles ensconced between the River Taragire and Lake Manyara.

Enjoy, too, Lake Tanganyika and the village of Ujiji, where the North American traveller Stanley met the explorer Livingstone. And Mount Kilimanjaro, which is the highest point on the continent of Africa. The Ruaha National Park, with its spectacular gorges and canyons. And the Selous Reserve – as big as Switzerland ‒ with its wealth of biodiversity. And even the Udzungwa Mountains, the home of primates, thanks to its rainforest.

To finish, the island of Zanzibar, a natural spectacle in the middle of the Indian Ocean, full of art and of a history which combines architectural marvels that have been declared ‘world heritage’ by Unesco with some of the most sordid episodes in the history of our species. Tanzania. Somewhere in Africa … 

The F&S ‘MUST SEES’

• In the nineteen-fifties, one of the most acclaimed documentary films ever made entitled Serengeti shall not die. Its photography is not deceptive. The oldest national park in Tanzania is Africa at its most intense, and a safari there is never disappointing.
• It is called “the home of the wild world”, and this is probably no exaggeration. The Ngorongoro is a fabulous reserve of lions, elephants, buffalo, rhinoceros and leopards.

   

• What can it be like to climb up to the summit of Africa?From Mount Kilimanjaro, with its 5,892 metres of altitude, the views over the most spectacular savannah on the Planet are guaranteed.

   

• Zanzibar is pure enchantment. Beaches and natural beauty are what every dreamer desires. But the island is also exotic and labyrinthine. Art, history and spices mix with the remembrance of the slave markets of bygone days.
• Who has never dreamed of resting in a treetop, observing the world from the heights? In Tanzania this is not just a longing – it can come true, so much so that one can sometimes touch the sky.

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