The Ngorongoro Crater

We left the Serengeti on July 28th & braved the abysmal roads once again as we returned to the Ngorongoro conservation area. Ironically enough, I have just read a 'top tip' in the travel section of the Sunday paper which recommends wearing a sports bra on safari in order to avoid undue discomfort & embarrassment! I'm not even joking!!! Our accommodation for the night was Rhino Lodge (www.ngorongoro.cc) which was very cool. It wasn't that far from the crater rim, & we had a cute little deck at the back of the room overlooking wild bush. We had a pleasant evening drinking a couple of beers & playing some cards. We played a fair amount of Texas hold 'em poker during the trip. Curto had given me a whole big bag full of British beer tops to give to the Roe's son who collects them. We soon discovered they made brilliant poker chips! We enjoyed a very nice meal that evening in a cosy dining room with a roaring open fire. The crater rim is over 3000m above sea level, & the drop in temperature was noticeable.

The next morning we were up at the crack of dawn. We had convinced the lodge to give us an early breakfast, & then we were off on our drive onto the crater floor. On top of the park fees you need to pay in order to enter the Ngorongoro conservation area, it's an extra US$100 for a vehicle to drive onto the crater floor, & we wanted to make the most of our time there! The crater really is an amazing place. It is about 18km in diameter, & boasts over 30 000 animals. Although to be fair, a good number of those are wildebeast & buffalo! One of the highlights was the beautiful old tusker in the photo above. He was by far the eldest of the elephants we had ever seen, & his tusks were quite incredible. It was disappointing that we never came across any of the elusive black rhino, but they estimate that there are only about 20 left in the crater, so it's not overly surprisingly. It just means that we need to count the semi-wild rhino we saw in Kenya in order to complete our 'big five'!

After we had finished in the crater it was another few hours drive back to Arusha. We got a fairly early night as we had an early start & a huge day of travel ahead of us the next day as we made our way to Zanzibar.