Lake Victoria
Africa’s largest lake, and the quiet way into the western Serengeti.
Muhtasari
Lake Victoria is the largest lake in Africa and Tanzania holds the biggest share of it, a southern shore of bays, granite outcrops and fishing villages running from Bukoba round through Mwanza to Musoma. Almost nobody comes here for the lake itself, which is the reason to. Mwanza is a working city built among enormous balancing boulders; Saanane Island National Park sits just offshore; and the Speke Gulf, an eighty-kilometre indentation east of the city, holds islands with roosts of several thousand egrets and cormorants. The lake edge is one of the better places in the country for waterbirds — African fish eagle, pied kingfisher, papyrus-dwelling specialities in the reed beds — and the fishing for Nile perch is serious. Practically, the south-eastern shore is a thirty-minute drive from the western Serengeti, which makes it the obvious approach to the park from the lake side rather than from Arusha.