Lake Eyasi is situated at the southwestern end of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area between Great Rift Valley Eyasi escarpment and Kidero mountains, just 133 km (95 miles) west of Lake Manyara. Lake Eyasi cover an area of about 1,050 square km (400 square miles).
The lake is as all the other lakes in the Rift Valley a soda lake. Lake Eyasi, which has one principle spring, the Sibiti River, is enclosed with walls consisting of purple lava. The main attraction of Lake Eyasi are the Hadzabe bushmen, the indigenous inhabitants and the last community of hunters and gatherers in Africa. Lake Eyasi is their homeland for over 10,000 years. They are still holding to their traditional way of life, hunting and gathering different kinds of fruits and honey.
The Hadzabe live in caves and they don’t wear any kind of clothes but rather skin to cover the private parts. Their community is endangered, because most of their land has been taken away from them for commercial production and they are forced to join the civilization.
Lake Eyasi is also inhabited by another bushmen community, the Tindiga. This community is also a hunters and gatherers community, but they are tired of this kind of live and want to join the civilized world. They have been living for centuries from the forest and its products, hunting animals such as monkeys. The Tindiga people don’t have permanent houses and avoid buildings with iron sheets, because they believe they cause blindness.
A visit to their community is something you will most likely not want to miss, perhaps you will even have the possibility to see how they shower and lotion with monkey bone narrow.
