Day 15 - Ngorongoro crater

I had been looking forward to this day a lot, as we would be going on a game drive in the Ngorongoro crater. Large trucks are not allowed into the crater, due to the steep slopes into and out of the crater, so this time we were going in jeeps.

From Karatu back to the crater took about 1 hour, which one of our group members used to familiarize our driver with Dutch / Belgian life. He introduced himself as Rik, but the driver looked at him quite hesitantly when he subsequently spelled it in Dutch: ER-I-KA. I think a short summary about the information that the driver got will suffice: ‘we don’t go to church that much, because we only believe a little bit in Jezus and also, we are afraid of Muslims’. Later he asked something about animals ‘rollebollen’ into the crater and in his defense, he was providing convincing ‘rollebol’ gestures with it, in an attempt to make clear what he meant.

One of the first things we saw in the crater, was that the maasai and their cattle roam around freely there. Wildlife is greatly condensed in the crater, as this is an attractive and for most animals permanent home due to year-round availability of water. Therefore, tourists are by no means allowed to leave their vehicles, but the maasai did not seem to be aware of or bothered by this.

Compared to the truck, a game drive in a jeep is quite a different experience. Being closer to the ground you can see less far, but it allows you to get closer to the animals, quite literally. We started with a carcass being eaten by vultures, marabous and little prairie dogs, followed by another one that was still being fought over by hyena’s. The insides of this last one were already out and there was one hyena accurately laying in the ribcage enjoying his after-dinner-dip. We also saw one of the hyenas walk away with a leg and later we saw that one again with two little hyena cups eating the leg.

One of my favorite animals are the pumba’s (warthogs) and we saw a couple with little ones close up. Funny thing about them is that when they walk they raise their tails and they drop it the second they stop, it is as effective as break lights, but much more fun to look at.

With all the animals condensed in a crater with a diameter of 23 km, the tourists get condense as well. During the game drive we already noticed many other jeeps that would pack together when there was something to see. During lunchtime it became even more clear how many tourists and jeeps there were. We stopped near a pond where we were allowed to leave the jeeps, although we were advised to eat our lunch inside the jeeps as some of the birds would sweep in and literally take everything they could get their claws on, a story that was confirmed by one of our group members eating her lunch near the pond. For lunch entertainment there was an elephant walking out of the pond not too far from where we were and he would patiently stand there until every last tourist had taken a picture.

There are also many lions in the cater and we got to see a plenty of them. We saw a few lying around before lunch already, but after lunch we saw two females that had their eye on a group of wildebeest. They looked like they were in hunting mode, but it was still quite warm and the wildebeest had an eye on them as well, so despite waiting for quite a while and hoping for a ‘kill’, we only got to see animals looking at each other. After this we moved on to another area where lions were spotted. Near a creek there were three lions, one couple to our left and one single male to our right. When we arrived, the couple just jumped across the creek and slowly walked towards us. To make sure that I was not exaggerating in my stories, I asked one of the guys in our group whether they were about 15 meter away, but during that time we moved closer, so he said that it was 10 rather than 15 meters. So, no lying or exaggeration, we looked the big male lion straight into his face from 10 meters away. Now, that is not just cool, that is also incredibly impressive and amazing.

Unfortunately we had to leave the crater much sooner than we wanted, although we had seen many, many things during our game drive. Another thing that already stuck me yesterday, is that the landscape on the Serengeti side of the crater is flat and dry with small sand tornado’s forming everywhere. Even though there are plenty of ponds and streams in the Serengeti and in the Ngorongoro crater, the earth is green within a distance of less than 10 meters around them and then it is dry again. The other side of the carter is however green and hilly. To me, this raises the question why the maasai and the animals choose to stay on that dry side instead of moving just a little distance to the lush, green side. When it comes to the animals, I guess we will never know, when it comes to the maasai, I think that quite a number of them already made it to the green side, only returning to the drought during office / tourist hours.

That evening we had diner in a restaurant in the city, although to me it seemed to be in the middle of nowhere. Our guide had arranged taxis to take us there and luckily I was standing in front of the line when a very agitated alpha-male pulled up in his pimped taxi. He seemed to be intent on being the first to leave to hotel gate, but did not manage that, so after taking a right turn off the paved road onto a path that I would not even have recognized as a bicycle path, we were literally eating the dust of the taxi in front of us. The road was pitch-dark and there were many people, kids, and dogs walking on / next to it. They got warned by the drivers horning and that was it, after that it was completely their own responsibility to get out of the way and do it fast. I have never experienced driving like that. The tail lights of the car in front of us were often not visible (although at times when they were briefly visible they were very, very close). Many times we could not even see the front of our own car through the dust, but that did slow things down at all. When a brick wall came looming out of the brownish cloud, we did not break, we just made a sharp left-turn. After about 10 or 15 minutes we reached the restaurant, surprisingly safe and alive. Diner was very nice and on our way back I ended up in the last taxi. As the last taxi is generally not driven by the alpha-male, this time the trip was much more quiet.