Ngorongoro

Ngorongoro Crater:  The Big Five?       Hit the red g+ to comment               

            “Ok my friends.  Today we visit the Ngorongoro crater, ” stated

Sultan, our Tanzania safari guide. 

 “Where did you say?” everyone called out. He carefully pronounced the location again and explained there are no silent letters in the Massai language.  Ngorongoro is pronounced N-Goron-goro.
 We would visit only the Ngorongoro crater, as the entire Ngorongoro conservation area is very large. The crater alone, the largest caldera in the world that is not flooded, is big enough.  Two thousand feet deep, and twelve miles in diameter, Ngorongoro is a volcano which built itself into a mountain, and then collapsed, making it a caldera. 

Ngorongoro crater is a sheer sided round hole in the ground, with a flat bottom holding year round water and grass, allowing a concentration of animals to stay in the crater all year, and not migrate. The crater beasts are among a privileged minority, the 2% of Tanzanian animals.  Most of the vast herds of grazing animals must follow the rains in a circular migration that covers over 1500 miles every year.
 The crater also contains many of Tanzania’s remaining black rhinos, which we hoped to see.

 The Big Five

Back in the day, gun shooting enthusiasts felt they proved their worth as hunters if they shot the BIG FIVE.  Lion, African elephant, Cape buffalo, leopard, and rhinoceros. We modern day photo hunters had bagged four, but rhinos are rare. We all wanted to get our big five.
                                                    Here's our big four.

Cape Buffalo

Leopard 

Lions

.

Elephant

Sultan said this elephant had a fifth leg.  Gives a whole new meaning to big five

Five legged elephant

We drove up a dirt road through fog and dust to the edge of the crater, where the fog lifted. The far red rim of the caldera’s steep walls, visible below a cobalt sky, enclosed a greenish brown plane crawling with ant like specks which binoculars revealed as minute zebras, elephants and wildebeests.

There are only two tracks, one on either end of the crater, by which a car maneuvers down the two thousand feet to the floor of the caldera. The car- wide red dirt track into the crater,  edge falling a sheer half mile to the far away ground below,  cliff all but scraping the car as the vehicle hugs the inside of the road, is daunting.  Daunting doesn't cover it  climbing up from the crater floor, skirting the crater drop on the edge of  the crumbly  ground.  Scraping past a vehicle coming down moved the experience into pants-wetting appalling.
 Cars coming up and cattle have right of way. What cattle?  Didn’t I mention our vehicles shared the road with Massai and their cattle trudging down the long winding road to drink, and graze?  They are not allowed to remain in on the bottom at night, so after a few hours the poor beasts and their herders must climb out again. The presence of these herds adds challenge to the drive. Thankfully, although bends in the road prevent seeing very far in advance, dust signals traffic ahead in time to pull over and wait in the pull outs provided for precarious passing.

Since we all made it safely, it was well worth the drive.

Views going down, and in the crater.

We saw many animals on the bottom, lions, cheetahs,  wildebeests, water buffalo, antelope of various kind, and big bull elephants. 

Rhino sighting!  Finally.  Ahhh.

You have your big five.  We have been very lucky on this trek.” Sultan exulted. He seemed genuinely pleased to show us his country. Besides, I suppose more sightings mean satisfied tourists, which mean more tips, and he had a family to feed.  His master’s degree in ecology and degree in hospitality were impressive credentials and perhaps should have been better paid.

  Rhino’s in the wild are a thrilling concept.  There they were.They moved ponderously across the plain, and lay down. Right in front of, well right in front of our binoculars.

In the interests of full disclosure, they were very far away, and I’m not sure should have counted for a whole big fifth.  Maybe we need to say saw the big four and a half, since without binoculars our rhinos looked like rocks moving slowly across the plane,  and in the binoculars like rhino-shaped mice.   I was thrilled by them, while wishing they were closer.

              Can you see the Black Rhino? The rhinos are the two in front.  Really.


Rhino  The fifth of the Big Five.   

Rhinos  not ants.  Trust me.