Where to start??? I guess at 5:30 when Graeme woke me up and we packed up the last few items, I had a shower and Peter arrived at 6:00. We drove the first 20km in the dark to the gate of the Ngorongoro National Park.
Morning dawned as we ascended the road up the crater wall. It was very cloudy and misty but we still had an amazing view of the surrounding rain forests, above and below us. About 6km into the park we reached the top of the crater at, 2400m and the clouds cleared briefly, to allow us our first view of the plains below.
Ngorongoro is amazing – it is often described as ‘the 8th Wonder of the World’ and is a World heritage Site. The crater is around 20km in diameter and inside of the crater plunges 610m below the rim. The mountain, where the crater now lies, was thought to have once been the tallest in Africa but due to a series of volcanic eruptions over millions of years the inside collapsed, giving rise to this breathtaking volcanic rich scenery. The area boasts enormous biodiversity; ranging from the semi-arid grasslands of the North West plains to the dense rainforests of the crater walls.
As we descended through the rain forest, these snow white clouds poured over the edge of the crater, like a waterfall. On arrival in the grassland area we were met with herds of buffalo. From there, we stumbled upon a pride of lion, with cubs, ambling up the road, they walked so close to the vehicle that if I put out my hand out I would have touched them. Next we saw around 30 spotted hyenas on a kill, with black backed jackal waiting in the wings. One hyena had bitten off a piece of the zebra leg, hoof and all, and ran off. Shortly after that, we were fortunate enough to see a cheetah; these are fairly rare here, as due to the large numbers of hyena, their prey is usually stolen from them. We also saw a black rhino and a huge elephant bull with the biggest tusks I have seen in a long time; only male ellie venture down into the grassland areas of the crater because there are too few trees for females and the young to browse.
There are huge herds of Grant’s and Thompson’s Gazelle, we had never seen these before, so that was pretty exciting. Then to finish it off we came across herds of thousands of wildebeest and zebra. The wildebeest are the white bearded species and make the strangest noises. There are no giraffe in the crater as the walls are too steep for them to descend, strangely there are no impala either.
After a stunning morning of game viewing and then driving through the Lerai Forest, with its fever trees and flat topped Acacias, we ascended back up from the crater. We stopped at the top and took pictures of the view in sunlight.
After the most amazing morning, the day kind of went downhill. The next 120km from Ngorongoro to the Serengeti were long, hard, hot, dusty, boring and the road was badly corrugated. The area is inhabited by Kenyan Maasai and their cattle. The Maasai and the wildlife have had to vie for grazing areas in the past but at present, in a multi-landuse experiment they are living side by side. The only wildlife we saw in their area was a wildebeest; guess he thought he was a cow. From what we have seen, the Maasai really rape the land with overgrazing. Clearly it’s not only cattle that are a problem but they are also causing overpopulation, with its polygamous society. Peter told us about one Maasai that had 20 wives and over 100 children and proudly bears the name Impala. The men also still insist on female circumcision, despite protests from the Tanzanian government. I’m not sure I like these chauvinist Maasai men, despite the fact they are friendly towards us.
Serengeti means endless and that is just what the landscape is, endless grasslands. We had a few raindrops along the next 40km to the campsite and mercifully this cooled things down for a few minutes. We also saw a pride of around 15 lions, including some big males and some tiny cubs. Another first sighting for us in the antelope world was seeing the Topi.
We arrived at the camp site around 4:00 and this is the worst one so far. It is packed with tents (for around 40 campers); 2 toilets and 2 showers for all these people; but useless as there is no water and it is not the cleanest camp either. I think the Serengetti Parks Board need to take a serious look at the state of their public camp sites. We, along with hundreds of overseas visitors have had to pay US$30 per person per night for this and that’s without the park fees of another US$50 per person per day. It doesn’t matter how wonderful the park is, you still would like clean, working ablutions and a clean camp site at the end of the day.
Midday view of crater floor
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