A group of 50 cyclists from Dar es Salaam has arrived in Ngorongoro Conservation Area after riding 785 kilometres from Dar es Salaam with the aim of promoting local tourism festive season.
The organiser of the expedition known as ‘Pedal to Ngorongoro’, Mr Hillary Chuwa said that their journey started at Msasani area in Dar es Salaam and rode a distance of about 785 kilometers to encourage local tourism especially on attractions found in Ngorongoro Conservation Area.
“We have spent six days from Dar es Salaam to the Ngorongoro Gate, our aim is to promote domestic tourism and we have chosen Ngorongoro because it has many tourism wonders… we believe that through this campaign we will continue to promote it and increase the number of tourists,” added Mr Chuwa.
He noted that the group that started the tourism campaign last year, visited Ngorongoro for the second time and expressed gratitude to the Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority (NCAA) management for supporting them and strengthening the relationship through cycling tourism that which attracted more participants from 30 last year to 50 this year involving participants of both sexes most being youth.
Conservation Deputy Commissioner (Conservation, Tourism and Community Development), Dr Christopher Timbuka, thanked the cyclists for riding from Dar es Salaam to Ngorongoro and waving the NCAA flag all the way.
Dr Timbuka assured them that NCAA leadership will continue to cooperate with the team in the campaign to promote local tourism in the country.
Expounding, NCAA Tourism Operations Manager Peter Makutian assured the team that Ngorongoro is an area with many tourist attractions including the Ngorongoro, Empakai and Olmoti craters.
Other attractions include the Olduvai Museum, the footprints of Laetoli, the shifting sands, the Ndutu plains area famous for breeding wildebeests and other attractions that will enable the cyclists to become ambassadors of Ngorongoro wherever they are,” Mr Makutian added.
The Ngorongoro Conservation has global importance for biodiversity conservation due to the presence of globally threatened species, the density of wildlife inhabiting the area and the annual migration of wildebeest, zebra, gazelles and other animals into the northern plains. Extensive archaeological research has also yielded a long sequence of evidence of human evolution and human-environment dynamics, including early hominid footprints dating back 3.6 million years.
