A Day at Ngorongoro Crater

June 21, 2015
|
Tanzania
|
0 Comments

On our second day in Tanzania we set out for Ngorongoro Crater conservation area. Ngorongoro Crater is a volcanic crater about 300 sq. kilometers in area and 600 meters deep. It is the largest, unflooded, unbroken caldera (a collapsed volcano) in the world. It is also home to Africa’s “big five:” elephant, lion, leopard, buffalo and rhino.

On the drive to the crater, we passed agricultural plots and fields full of flowers. Occasionally we’d drive through a small village that seemed to cater to the tourists making their way towards the great game parks. The villages offered an abundance of little shops selling colorful Tanzanian art such as tingatinga, a colorful style of painting that originated in Tanzania several decades ago and is still popular amongst tourists.

We reached the crater rim in the afternoon. The drive from Arusha is about three hours depending on where along the crater’s rim you plan to stay. Once you reach the entrance to the park, you must purchase your permits. There is a fee schedule depending on how many days you plan to stay, if you plan to camp, the type of car you have, etc. It can get quite expensive. Since my sister was working in Serengeti, she had contacts within the conservation community and was able to score us a free spot at a lion researcher’s house right on the crater rim.

We spent the late afternoon relaxing. I imagined all of the wildlife wandering around the crater floor, too small for us to see from our perch above. We cooked dinner and had a lovely chat with the researcher. It was nice to get the inside scoop on the lion population. She knows them all by name, the way we know our friends. She knows their personality traits and their social standings within the pride. We also talked about the tricky balance between conservation and cultural preservation, and the many difficult issues surrounding the community of Massai living in the conservation area. I feel it is important for me to learn as much as I can about the places we visit on these trips, and this conversation was a great education.

The next morning we woke up before sunrise. We wanted to get down to the crater early while the wildlife was active (they tend to get a little sleepy in the afternoon sun). There are three roads to the crater floor, one for descent only, one for ascent only, and one where you can descend or ascend from crater floor to rim. We choose the descend only road, Seneto, and planned to make a huge loop around the crater floor to the ascend only road, Lerai.

As soon as we hit the plains, we saw so many animals. We were right to go so early in the morning.

Not long into our drive we came across a lion hunt: three ladies were stalking a herd of zebras. The zebras were nervous, and so was I! I know that hunting is natural and necessary, and I don’t want the lionesses to go hungry! But I also don’t want to be witness to a kill. I closed my eyes. The hunting process was taking a long time. Apparently lion’s are poor communicators. They don’t work well as a team, which leads to a low hunting success rate. We moved on. There were more animals to see!

We kept on driving, always on high alert for the next possible animal sighting. “Oh look, what is that in the distance!” we’d say, working together to identify the moving body. We came across a huge harem of zebra mixed with a heard of wildebeest. Apparently these two species are best buddies, and work together to keep an eye out for predators. The wildebeest have great hearing, while the zebras have better vision. When we found them, they all seemed pretty relax. Most of the zebras were embraced in what looks like a hug, but it is actually a way for them to keep an eye on the savanna while relaxing. Each zebra will rest its head on the other’s back; facing opposite directions is the perfect way for them to have a 360 degree lookout.

We continued our drive, observing ostrich, hyena, elephant, jackal and more. Each just going about their daily business: sniffing, sleeping, or walking slowly across the grasslands. We stopped for a quick picnic lunch in the car (we weren’t allowed to get out of the vehicle except in specified locations for obvious safety reasons), and then we carried on. That’s what Safari is, right? Drive, look, drive, look. In the afternoon, we headed back up to the rim for a nature walk with one of the rangers. Although we didn’t see any big game on our walk (which frankly, phew, I would have been pretty scared if we’d walked into a pride of lions!), it was nice to have a chat with a ranger to learn more about the wildlife while getting to stretch our legs a bit.

The next day we were on the road again. We started early because we wanted to stop at Olduvai Gorge and the shifting sand dune. The Leakey’s, two paleoanthropologist-archeologists, made a very important discovery during their excavations in the Olduvai Gorge. The artifacts that they found not only proved that humans developed in Africa, but also gave us valuable insight into how these early humans lived. There is a small educational center on the site for tourists who would like to learn more about their human past. The site is fairly small and does not take much time to explore.

Just a short drive from the archeology site is the shifting sand dune. This weird dune is made of grey, volcanic ash rather than sand. The dune sits on top of the land but continuously shifts overtime, moving approximately 10 meters a year. It stays in dune shape though, and does not spread flat over the ground, which is what makes it so interesting and strange. We climbed the dune and surveyed the land, and that was it really. It was a nice little break in the drive, but I was excited to keep going. Next stop Serengeti National Park!