Safari, Part Two: Ngorongoro Crater

First, a little geology lesson. Picture a line of large volcanoes going roughly north-south, along a huge fault line (the Rift Valley). To the west of the volcanoes, millions of years ago, a verdant lake-filled area. Now picture the volcanoes erupting, and spewing ash for centuries to the west, filling in the lakes with a thick layer of ash, making a flat plain the color of cement. Then, picture the volcanoes going dormant (mostly) and collapsing into themselves, leaving enormous calderas. And picture the whole area then sinking below the level of the plain.

The line of calderas (collapsed volcanic craters) are now Olmoti Crater, Empakaai Crater, and the most well-known of the three, Ngorongoro Crater. It’s the world’s largest unbroken caldera, meaning it’s a perfect bowl on all sides, 19 km across. It contains a huge shallow alkaline (“soda”) lake, and miles of grasslands, swamps, marshes, and a small forest off to one side. The rim of the crater is wrapped in fog and clouds most of the time, but the floor is windswept and chock-full of animals and birds.



We set off on Thursday morning with a 5-hour drive to the Ngorongoro Conservation Area – passing through Arusha, then the Maasai region, then past Lake Manyara and Tarangire, and then arriving at the gate to fill out the requisite paperwork (among strolling olive baboons). Beyond the gate, the road climbs steeply through forest and follows the crater around almost to its other side. Since this is a conservation area and not a national park, the Maasai live in and around the crater, herding cattle and dashing up to safari vehicles with chains of bead bracelets for sale. Zebra graze right alongside their cattle. We dropped our cook, Rama, at the campsite (“Simba A” – the only public campsite along the rim) and took our evening drive down into the crater – a steep, windy dirt road with a stiff cold breeze.



In the crater are large herds of wildebeest and zebra together – in such abundance that it looked like the old paintings of buffalo in the early 19th century in America.



We also saw many Thompson’s gazelles, yellow-crowned cranes and flamingoes, water buffalo, hippos, ostrich, warthogs, and in the forest area, large tribes of baboons.





We were stared down for a long time by this bold hyena. He looked like he wanted to come with us. We said no thanks.



We spent a long time parked next to this lion couple sleeping in the grass RIGHT next to the road less than 12 feet from our open topped, open windowed land cruiser. Eventually they woke up, did what lion couples do, and went back to sleep. Well, hey, you know, it’s nature. The pictures and videos of this will not be included in this blog due to wanting to maintain a family friendly rating.



We stayed so long that evening that the sun was going down by the time we drove up out of the crater on an even steeper and windier road. In fact, we missed the 6 pm cutoff, and had to pay a fine to have them open the gate for us. We arrived at the campsite with the temperature dropping fast, ravens swooping around in the drizzle and clouds, and the cooks busy in the kitchens. Forrest started to feel crummy, and we all put on all our clothing layers and jumped around to keep warm. We had dinner, and Forrest felt worse & was having fever and chills so Don and I had him in our tent that night. He was really sick that night, and in the morning it was cold and we were socked in with the thickest fog I have ever seen, you couldn’t even see where the crater was, it just looked like the world ended beyond the trees.



In the morning several people told us that they had encountered elephants, and warthogs, but we hadn’t seen anything or had anyone nose our tent. One woman was trapped in the washroom by a warthog. We had a crater drive Friday morning – I wasn’t thrilled about taking a safari vehicle out without being able to see 5 feet into the wall of white fog, but once we got over near the crater descent road, it was fine, and there was no fog on the crater floor. That morning we met a new animal, the hartebeest.



Also, there was a large morning rush hour of safari vehicles to observe several pairs of feeding lions. We all got excited when one of the females started off to stalk the nearby herd of zebras, but she just eventually trotted on by without taking anyone down.



Ngorongoro was beautiful, although much colder than we had expected, and Forrest didn’t enjoy much of it, spending the entire time bundled in a blanket, or throwing up. Despite that, it was a calm, peaceful place with incredible changing cloud formations, color, and animal herds – a lovely place.