Tuesday April 29th and Wednesday April 30th 2008: Ngorongoro crater

The crater is one of the most famous animal viewing places in Africa and part of the World Unesco heritage site of Ngorongoro conservation area. The crater formed 2.5 million years ago when a mountain imploded. Since then, it has been a haven for animals due to the grasses and water that lie at the crater floor. Wildebeest, flamingos, lions, elephants, etc… all live and thrive and eat each other there.
So on Tuesday we leave Arusha in the afternoon to head out to our campsite where we will spend the night before visiting Ngorongoro crater on Wednesday.
The campsite is nice and the tent lofty. The showers are apparently warm but I feel too tired to take one.
We join a Dutch father and daughter who have also signed up for the Safari and they show us their pictures from their day at Lake Manyara national park. Seeing them makes us even more excited and hopeful to see the big 5: Lion, Rhino (nearly extinct), buffalo, cheetah and Hippo. Dinner is very good and we go to bed content.
On Wednesday we head out for the crater very early. It’s foggy and grey so as we drive down so don’t get to enjoy the view of the crater which is 20 km wide. On our way the only people we cross are Masai who are allowed to let their cattle graze in the conservation area. . We meet with a Masai man who gives us fuel before going down any further into the crater. The road down the cliff is very bumpy.
Once we are there, it’s hard to describe how beautiful this natural site is. Cliffs that form the crater edge surround us, but inside, it feels like we are a small dot in a vast plain.
As the day goes by, we encounter 2 lions after a kill who are sitting around the carcass of a wildebeest. We are so close to one of the lions that it is unbelievable. They don’t seem to care and I understand as they are at the top of the food chain so how could we bother them? We see many herds of gazelle, antelopes, buffalos and interesting looking birds including ostriches. We drive by a pond where Hippos are rolling in the mud. Just before stopping for lunch we find 4 lionesses waiting for a dead hippo’s body to float to the edge of the water. For some reason, they will not swim into the water. The stench of the carcass is more or less bearable depending on where the wind is blowing.
Just before leaving the park we see 2 black rhinos who in return stare at us. We are the only ones to have spotted them so it feels like a special moment.
We leave the crater so happy and fulfilled. On our way back, we manage to catch amazing views as by then the sky has cleared up.