Tanzania Safari Day 7 – Ngorongoro Crater

Now its time for my favorite road again but this time with a twist. We decided to not drive exactly on the road but next to the road and swap sides from time to time. This drive was probably the dustiest of all of our days and there were times I felt like I couldn’t breathe. 3+ hours later we arrived back to the main part of the crater but we continued onwards to head up, up, up to almost the top to get to the Ngorongoro (pronounced mm Gore O Gore O) Sopa Lodge. This is a beautiful lodge where your room has a wall full of windows to enjoy the views. Again, much like the other places they advise you to not wander around in the dark by yourself as there have been known to have a few of the cape buffalo wandering the area.

First thing I did was take a nice hot shower, which took a few washes to get the dirt out of my hair. It felt like straw. After that I enjoyed the wonderful sunset, but watch out, it goes quick as the sun dips below the crater line, a few people missed it thinking they had more time.

I went in to the main part of the lodge where a few of the local Masai came in to give a ceremony dance presentation. They don’t use musical instruments so this is more of a chanting and howls as they move about. One will move forward and consistently jump straight up in the air and man they can get high.

After dinner I felt it was time to turn in, these early days demand earlier bedtimes. So I crawl into bed and something touched me. I yelped. What the hell is in the bed with me?! Ha! It gets a little chilly up at the top of the rim, and with the bed turn down they had put a hot water bottle at the foot of the bed in between the sheets.

Inside the crater

It’s my last day in Tanzania and again we are up before the dawn. We set out before 6 AM to descend into the crater. The crater is beautiful, but its truly more of a caldera. We first met up with some buffalo, some with the biggest horns I have seen. In the crater you need to stay on the paths that are available and off in the distance we saw this very large pride of lions. The ringleader was the male lion and the cubs were happy to chase after him and have some play fights.

There are hyena everywhere! So many! There are over 25,000 animals in the crater and if you ask me hyena make up the majority of them (not true but felt like it). We even saw some baby hyena cubs playing in the distance. Hyena being a part of the ugly 5. Did I mention that beyond the big 5, there is also the small 5, and the ugly 5? Well hyena are in the ugly 5 category but those cubs are sure cute.

We stopped for breakfast near a hippo pool where we could get out and stretch our legs. Such a calm, beautiful spot. The clouds would billow over the top of the crater and disappear. The hippos would float up and sink down in the water as they pleased.

There are a few rhino who live in the crater and one of the chef’s from the lodge said he almost guaranteed it that I would see one of them. So we took off to see if we could find one of the rhinos. While on the hunt for the rhino we enjoyed a nice view of some of the elephant bulls who are in the crater. A lot of the elephants live further up the hill but will descend during the day while the older bulls will mostly stay in the crater all the time. I didn’t know this but elephants go through about 6 or so set of teeth as they age when they are on their last set it makes it more difficult to eat so they tend to chew on the more tender shoots.

There are so many birds in the crater. We saw herons, eagles, flamingos, kingfishers, storks, some cranes and the kori bustard. The kori bustard is the largest (heaviest) flying bird. He gets up to over 40 lbs and over 4 feet tall and can take off flying from a standing position. I even caught a glimpse of a flycatcher while on the drive out of the crater but I wasn’t able to capture a picture. Something about these beautiful birds and their plumage just gets me to sit back and be in awe.

Time to go home

Our drive back from Ngorongoro was rather uneventful although the place Eric had planned to stop for lunch was a little over packed so we pushed on but then couldn’t find a great place to stop so we just pulled off on the side of the road that Eric felt was safe so we could have a hood top lunch. We arrived back at Angel’s house around 4 and Eric and I parted ways. I will say I felt Roy Safari’s treated me very well and definitely made my safari experience one to remember.

I had a few moments to repack and readjust my bags before Angel returned from picking Aidan up from day camp. Then we hung out for a few moments before I had to depart. She is so sweet that she made me a salad and chicken for the road for me to eat while on the drive to the airport. Mr, Philip was all set to drive me back to the airport. I wanted to give him a little something to thank him for his time and driving me about after his normal work day but I figured he wouldn’t accept anything from me so I left some money with Angel so she could give it to him the next day after I had departed.

The whole trip I hadn’t seen Mount Kilimanjaro and guess what, she finally showed her face to me on our drive back. Mr. Philip was kind enough to find a good spot for us to pull off so I could quick grab a picture. I have a feeling I just may be back to climb that mountain one day.