Ngorogoro Crater

We were at Lake Manyara on Monday the 15th and on Tuesday morning we got up and had a quick breakfast of watermelon and deep fried sweet potato before we left at 7am for Ngorogoro Crater. We had planned to leave earlier, but the Twiga Lodge restaurant didn’t open until 6:30. It turned out not to matter because when we finally bumped our way into the information centre at Ngorogoro almost an hour later, we had a very long wait ahead of us while our guide, David, went to get our permit. The car park was filled with safari vehicles so he had to wait in line for a long time. Then he told us that when he finally got to the window to pay, he was $5 short. So he had to come back to us in the car and get the extra money and then go and line up again to pay and get the permit. All this for a chance to glimpse some animals (or so I thought at the time... it ended up being hundreds of times better than I ever expected - next time I will happily wait in line for hours!) Also, while we were there a baboon followed me into the bathroom, which I found strangely terrifying.

Nicole and I at the information centre - Ngorogoro is freezing that early in the morning!

It takes another 45 minutes to get into the crater from there. First you wind upward so that you’re 610m above the information centre, to the crater rim, and then you descend into the crater itself. The road is very, very bad. When I told my parents about it I compared it to the road up Sanitorium Hill at home, only ten times worse and with even more hairpin turns. Plus it’s dirt of course and you bump up and down, up and down the whole way. It was very foggy so we couldn’t see anything from the lookout point and it didn’t start to clear until we were quite far down. The view is amazing though. It was what I expected being on safari in Africa to look like – wide open plains for the most part, dotted with small clumps of trees now and then. There was a lake in the distance and small streams flowing in the hollows. As you got further down towards the crater floor you could see dark patches which were large herds of animals grazing in the plains.

The first animals that we saw as we drove down into the crater were buffalo. They were standing on the hillside, looking down at the stream of water. It seemed like they wanted to go and drink, but were not entirely sure about it. David said it was because the lions like to hide down by the water, knowing that at some point or other, all the animals will have to come down to drink. There were little buffalo calves as well, which seemed like they were cute - although they were too far away to tell really.

On the drive in we also saw ostrich. I’ve seen ostriches in zoos before, but they seemed so much bigger when they were out in the wild! I certainly wouldn’t want to be out of the car and in the path of an angry ostrich, that’s for sure. 

The next thing we saw were herds of zebra and wildebeest. Apparently the wildebeest and the zebra hang out together because the zebra have very good eyesight and the wildebeest have very good hearing, so they are able to help protect each other from predators. The zebra and wildebeest crossed the road in front of us, only two or three metres away. It was a real live zebra crossing!

We saw a whole lot of safari cars parked in the distance so we went to investigate – usually if there are a lot of cars in one place then there is something worth looking at! In this case there were four female lions in the distance. They looked like they were trying to hunt buffalo, but one large buffalo (perhaps the leader of the herd) was standing lookout so they didn’t come too close. We watched the lions stalk around in the distance before following them along the road. At one point there were two warthog in the grass and a lioness started stalking and then chasing one of them - perhaps only 20m away from us. None of the other lions backed her up though so the warthog got away. It wasn’t going to be a lion’s dinner today!

Then the most amazing thing happened. The lions came over to the safari cars. They walked back and forwards in front of the cars and paced along the line of vehicles. Twice lions came straight towards us – the first time I was so terrified of looking straight into the eyes of a lion with no barrier between us, that I ducked down into the car. David said not to be worried, as the lions never jump on the safari cars. The lions walked along the length of our car, so close that we could have reached down out of the pop up roof and touched them. It was amazing and scary all at once. We stayed there for a long time – more than an hour, watching the lions. They seem to accept the cars and the inevitable noise that comes with them as a part of their environment. They don’t even blink an eye or turn around when one of the cars starts its engine or follows it down the road.

Lionesses walk down the road in front of our car.

Lioness directly behind us. She came so close we could have touched her. If you look closely you can see the beautiful patterns on her coat.

We saw more lions later on too – once a young male lion, who didn’t yet have a full mane and another time, three more females who had cornered a wildebeest, but did not appear to be making any attempt to catch it. I had wanted to see lions on safari and we got to see eight altogether. Being in the same environment as all these wild animals was very interesting – it seemed familiar in some ways, due to the amount of wildlife documentaries I’ve seen (only those narrated by David Attenborough though!), yet entirely different in other ways. I used to want to cry on the documentaries when baby wildebeest are snatched from their mothers or antelope are killed. And yet, when you’re there it seems different. The killing is another, albeit horrible, part of the circle of life. Although after seeing those lions hunting it amazes me that one day the “lion will lay down with the lamb!” What a different world that will be!

We saw a lot of other animals – jackal, two different types of gazelle, hyena and baboons, as well as hundreds of zebra and wildebeest. By lunchtime we had seen most all of the animals we wanted to see except for a rhino. We drove around and around searching for the black rhino (of which there are only eight in the whole crater) and eventually just before we stopped to eat, we saw one in the distance. At first I mistook it for a large rock, but it turned out that it was a rhino lying down asleep. David said that rhinoceros walk alone, which made me sad for some reason, to imagine eight rhinos walking around the crater without company. Rhinoceros only eat grass and they have no predators due to their size. It seems like a lonely existence, but I suppose they must have been designed that way.

There is a beautiful lake in Ngorogoro Crater, although I didn’t realize how big it was until later that afternoon when we stopped at the lookout on our way home and were able to look over the whole crater. In the lake were both white and pink flamingoes as well as other birds. I’m afraid, not being particularly interested in birds, that I don’t remember what they were!

We stopped to eat lunch at a small swamp-like lake which was filled with hippopotami. We had seen one hippo earlier, beached in an area beside a small pond, but here there were at least half a dozen that we could see, and probably others beside. I never really realized how huge they are. I can see now why they are one of the more dangerous African creatures – just their sheer size scared me. We had to eat lunch in the car as there are many scavenging birds in the area which swoop down and steal food from people. They have very sharp claws so could potentially seriously injure people. 

Dyan and Nicole in front of the hippo lake. The blob in the water to the right of Dyan is actually two hippopotami. 

We ate lunch in the car to avoid the birds! This photo doesn't adequately show how dusty I was!

At the lunch area there were also some very interesting toilets. Apparently the “squatty potty” (as I called it much to Dyan and Nicole's amusement) is common here, but we just hadn’t been lucky enough to come across one before. Also common is a lack of toilet paper – always carry a roll with you in your bag!

After lunch we drove out of the crater to the lookout at the top. It was slightly hazy, but a beautiful view looking out over the entire crater. I was the only one game enough to go and stand on the very edge of the (barrier-less) platform. Everyone else, including our guide, was too scared and didn’t want to go near the edge for fear of falling off. I tried to reassure them that you wouldn't fall very far as there were bushes there, but no one believed me.

Beautiful view down into the crater.

Standing on the edge of the world!

The trip back to Arusha was very, very long (it seemed to take three times as long to get home as it did to get there) and very bumpy. By the time we got back at 8pm my neck was aching from bumping all over the road and we were exhausted. We stopped at a souvenir shop on the way back which was interesting although you can buy most of the same things at the Maasai market in Arusha. We also stopped to look at a building that Dyan and I had admired on the way to Ngorogoro. It used to be a souvenir store, but now it’s abandoned. To me, it looked like an African fairytale house! Dyan made Nicole go down and take pictures and they came back absolutely covered in sticky, prickly thorns. A week later we were still finding the sticky things in our room in Arusha!

The house looked like it came straight out of an African fairytale.

When we got back Caroline commented that she thought I had gotten a tan. Not so at all. What no one tells you about going on safari is just how dirty you will get. Yes, I know this is Africa and it is a dusty and dirty place, and yes we were standing in a car with essentially no top on it for two days, but I still did not expect to have so many layers of dirt encrusted in my skin. The night we stayed at the Twiga Lodge I took my sunglasses off and looked in the mirror only to find that I looked somewhat strange. I wondered if I had gotten sunburnt as the skin around my eyes appeared much lighter. It took me a few minutes to realize that it was dirt and that a washcloth would do the trick! When we got back to Arusha I have never been so grateful for a shower in my life. I take at least one shower every day at home, but never because I’m actually covered in dirt!

We had an amazing two days and aside from the less than wonderful food on the first day, we would definitely recommend the company that we went on safari with. It was fun seeing so many wild animals and it was nice to spend time with some new friends.

Altogether – safari njema. A very good trip indeed.

xoxo,

-Hannah