Arusha National Park Dangers: Essential Safety Tips & Why to Avoid Visiting
A $135 Lesson Learned—Sharing for Free! You’re in for a treat!
Many influencers on 🍠 hype up Arusha National Park—just a 45-minute drive from Arusha town, less crowded, and supposedly teeming with flamingos 🦩. Plus, you can hike and see wildlife. Sounds like the perfect DIY destination, right? Well… no one mentioned that this season, all the flamingos have flown away 😭.
Spent a fortune only to see nothing—not a single flamingo, just a few giraffes and zebras so far away that even a 200mm lens couldn’t capture them. Oh, and prices have gone up across the board. Here’s the latest fee list:
– Park entry: $60
– Hiking: $46 (for security + guide—I skipped this cost)
– Private car hire: $75 (round trip from Arusha, including driver’s entry fee and parking at $11. My hostel quoted $250, but I found a non-safari driver at a roadside café. Some 🍠 pros negotiated it down to $40 excluding fees—I tried but failed. Maybe you can do better!)
⚠️ The park only accepts cards or digital payments, with a 5% processing fee!
Serengeti is $83, Ngorongoro is $70… How does this tiny, ugly, animal-barren park justify charging $60?! 👋
The only upside? On a clear day, you can see Kilimanjaro over the lake. But is that view worth $135? So mad, but I still had to smile for photos 🙂 (immediately dropped the smile afterward) 😔.
⚠️ PSA for travelers in Tanzania right now: Lake Natron also has no flamingos lately—don’t trek all that way for 🦩! All Tanzanian flamingos are currently in Ngorongoro. Heading there now—will share pics tomorrow!
⚠️⚠️ [Where to Find the Animals] It’s not just wildebeests and zebras that migrate—flamingos move between parks too! Always confirm their current location before planning. I even met someone who spent $800 to visit Serengeti, only stayed in the central area (missed the north), and saw zero wildebeests. Once I cool off, I’ll write a full Tanzania Safari guide—covering seasonal animal locations, park selection strategies, DIY costs, and how to find tours. May lucky strangers stumble upon it.
Anyway, if I saved you money or time, hit like and follow! Maybe I can earn some ad revenue before leaving Africa to recoup today’s losses 😭. Still 100+ followers short of being a ~professional~ influencer. Never planned to monetize before, but now my daily-posting grind has one goal: earn back today’s $1000 loss 💢.
Big ambitions, huh? 😏 Bet you can tell how heartbroken I am today!!!
