Udzungwa National Park
Udzungwa Mountains National Park is a unique and startlingly beautiful place. The habitats contained within the national park include highland tropical rainforest, mountain forest, Miombo woodland, grassland and steppe.
There are more than 400 bird species, 2500 plant species (25% of which are endemics) and 6 primate species. It has the second largest biodiversity of a national park in Africa, that honour goes to Lake Manyara National Park. Six primate species have been recorded, five of which are endemic.
The Iringa Red Colobus and Sanje Crested Mangabey are only found in the Udzungwa Mountains National Park. Udzungwa Mountains National Park is one of Tanzania’s most outstanding, pristine, wildernesses, and is characterized by geologically unique and dramatic mountain ranges forested in the highest variety of forested biospheres.
It is one of thirty-four “World Biodiversity Hotspot” and one of 200 WWF Eco-regions of global and critical importance. The vast array of endemic plant and primate species allows pilgrims to the mountain cathedrals glimpses into an ecosystem that appears almost primeval.
This world sprawls from the Taita hills in Southern Kenya to the Makambako Gap in Southern central of Tanzania, and is sometimes is referred to as “The Galapagos Islands of Africa”. A holy place to the local tribes people, the slopes have remaided undisturbed out of respect to the powerful spirits of the mountain’s haunted trees and caves. Isolated fortresses of rock and vegetation the mountains stand centrally along the main route between Dar Es Salaam and Arusha, mysterious sentinels whom beckon with secrets yet to be revealed.
