The river explains everything
The Tarangire river is the only permanent water across an enormous area. In the dry season, June to October, everything living within a radius of kilometres comes down here to drink, and the park turns into a funnel: herds of hundreds of elephants, buffalo, zebra and wildebeest concentrated on the banks.
In the rains the opposite happens: there is water everywhere, the animals disperse and the park empties out considerably. It is the only one of the four where the season radically changes what you will see.
The baobabs
Tarangire's baobabs are hundreds of years old, some more than a thousand. They are absurd trees: a swollen trunk several metres across to store water, and branches on top that look like roots, which earned them the nickname of the upside-down tree.
Many have scars on the trunk, marks left by elephants scraping with their tusks to get at the damp pulp inside when there is no water.
Lions in the trees
Tarangire shares with Lake Manyara the oddity of lions that climb trees. Nobody is entirely sure why they do it — to escape the flies, for shade with a breeze, to see better — but these are the two places in the north where it happens regularly.
There are pythons in the branches too, which is rarer still and a good deal harder to find.
