Kilimanjaro Airport & Arusha National Park Afternoon Safari
Kilimanjaro Airport is a very small airport but serves as a connection to one of the most beautiful places on the planet - Serengeti! Most of you visiting the Serengeti National Park will arrive at and depart this airport through road or air. Once you land at Kilimanjaro Airport (JRO), there is a visa / immigration section for all tourists. The line seemed to be longer for folks who already had an online visa during our visit. We had opted for visa on arrival, so ended up filling a form on arrival with basic particulars and proceeded to a different counter for visa on arrival. It was interesting to note that the visa on arrival counters were empty compared to the counters processing the online visas. So you present the filled form, passport, pay visa processing fees, answer a few questions about purpose of visit, place of stay and will be issued the visa. We paid in cash here and are not sure if they accept card payments. Check for the visa fees based on your nationality and have the necessary cash either in USD or in a local currency and if paying by card, research beforehand. Another thing of note is similar to the entry form, you will be required or remember to fill an exit form when exiting or leaving Tanzania. You should be able to find the form after security and check-in before the immigration counters. We noticed quite a lot of people being unaware of this process and having to go back once they meet the Immigration officers without that form.
Our stay in Arusha was at the African Tulip hotel. The drive to the hotel is about 1 hour from airport. JRO is about 1 hour from Arusha and Moshi towns which has a number of hotels. If you have a quick connection from JRO and need a room for short stay then Airport Planet lodge is a good option - they provide airport pick up / drop off.
We planned to do an afternoon game drive at Arusha National Park to get us familiar with our safari vehicle and photography gear. One of the objectives was also to see some of the species that are less likely to be encountered in our next destinations ( Ngorongoro, Serengeti) namely Bushbuck antelope and Black-and-white colobus monkey. While you will find a lot of bird and animal species, do not expect to see the big 5 in this park.
The Arusha National Park itself is about 45 minute drive from our hotel. Washrooms are available at the park entrance that you can make use of, before the game drive. We even saw some mongoose near the walkway to washroom.
Some of the birds and animal species we got to see during our drive were Little bee-eater (smallest bee-eater), Olive baboons, Black and white Colobus monkeys, Bushbuck, Waterbuck, Cape buffalo, Duiker, flamingoes, warthogs and giraffes. Big cats are difficult to see since park is pretty close to human settlements. A lot of websites do mention viewing hippos but we did not see any while we were visiting. The vegetation is densely wooded and definitely much different compared to Serengeti plains. The vegetation reminded us some of the dense forests we saw while on Tiger Safari at Corbett National Park, India.
Colobus monkeys were fascinating to watch; they seem to be spending most of the time high up at the trees and jump to different branches to feed on leaves. They got their name from greek word ‘colobus’ meaning for mutilated - they do not have thumbs. Their mantle hair and tails assist them in long leaps. Similar to other monkeys they live in troops.
A lot of greater and lesser flamingoes were seen at Lake Momella. The vast number made the lake look pink. The lesser flamingoes feed on spirulina algae that gives them the reddish coloration. The flamingoes migrate between Lake Manyara and Momella.
A lot of people do an entire day trip inside the park before they begin their Serengeti safari and that will give you enough time if observing any interesting wildlife behavior / interaction.
A short YouTube video of our trip is documented here.