Lake Manyara National Park is one of the smallest safari parks in Tanzania, but encloses within its numerous microclimates a diverse range of landscapes and animal populations which mirror those of many different parts of Tanzania in miniature. It is easily reached in 90 minutes from Arusha by road as a convenient stop-over between river African wilderness destinations at Ngorongoro and Tarangire.

Between the cliffs and the eponymous soda lake, which extends around 30 miles (50 kilometers) along the base of the 500 meter high East African Rift Valley escarpment, home to impudent rock-climbing klipspringer and diminutive dik-dik, there is a narrow belt of acacia woodland and area of grassland which changes seasonally from short, rich grazing lawns to golden, dry grass savannah.  

When green, it is colonized by wildebeests, warthogs, Cape buffalos and zebras, and when it is dry, ostrich, elephant and giraffe can be seen, the latter so dark in coloring as to look almost black in the distance. Blue and vervet monkeys, giraffe, and elephant feed in the acacia and mahogany woodlands but wander out to the saltlicks around the receding lake. Lions also sleep in the forks of the acacia trees, an unusual behavior prompted by their environment.