Amboseli National Park

Amboseli National park offers one of the best views of Mount Kilimanjaro 5,985 m dominating the plains like a powerful god ruling the world. Ancient Swahili and Arab legends used to tell about a great inland mountain, in the summit lived a terrible god who punished those who dared to approach his home by paralyzing their hands and feet. In this very poetic way the inhabitants of the tropical shores described a phenomenon that was alien to them, the freezing snow covered cap of Kilimanjaro.

Kilimanjaro is not within the limits of Amboseli, its in Tanzania. Upon the partition of East Africa into 2 spheres of influence, German and British, England had two mountains vs none for Germany, so Queen Victoria gave Kilimanjaro as a birthday present to her nephew-grandson, Kaiser Wilhelm II, and the deal kept everyone happy.

The Amboseli National park was gazetted in 1974 with an extension of 392 km˛, though it is surrounded by a much larger reserve in which the Maasai people settle and breed their cattle. Amboseli park is situated in the Great Rift Valley province, close to the Tanzanian border northwest of Kilimanjaro. Despite the high temperatures, the park's lands are elevated above 1,180 m. The mountain's summits remain hidden by the clouds for the most part of the day, dawn being the best moment to catch a view of its snowy square head. The Amboseli territory belongs to the land of the Maasai, the legendary tribe of nomad warriors and shepherds that feed on a mixture of blood and milk.

When Kilimanjaro snow melts the porous subsoil layers of volcanic rocks get spoaked. Waters converge into various underground streams, that rise in 2 clear water springs in the center of the park and ooze from down under in several points giving birth to large marshes like the Loginya Swamp, in which papyrus grow and elephants, hippos and buffalo's find their particular spas, together with their accompanying egrets.