31 July -- Ngorongoro Crater (by Roger)

As we’ve come to expect from our hotel, we had a great breakfast – the usual warm service and excellent food. I think they could sell the pineapple here as candy.

We loaded into our car and headed for Ngorongoro Crater, a mile or so up the road. I’m catching on to the weather here; it’s cloudy and cold in the morning and sunny and cool after 1 or 2 pm. I had to wear shorts (everything else I had was dirty and being laundered) and, as a result, I froze. It was so cold that I was cuddling around the dirty t-shirt I’d kept to wrap around my camera. The drive up was wonderful, though. As we ascended the crater wall, the weather went from overcast to foggy and windy, and the image of acacia trees wrapped in this mist was remarkable. We drove along the top of the crater wall in fog for so long that I started to wonder whether the inside of the crater was going to be foggy too, but our driver assured us it would be clear. Speeding along, our driver couldn’t see 20’ ahead, and we didn’t look.

After a long while on the top of the crater, we started descending a little. About this point, a group of zebras emerged from the mist, and Caroline and I stared as that never-to-be repeated photo-op vanished back into the mist. We complained about that lost opportunity the rest of the day despite David and Linda making up rules to prevent us from whining about it.

Ngorongoro is one of the premier wildlife experiences in the world, if not the premier. It’s a huge volcanic caldera – about 20 miles in diameter. The inside of the crater is flat, and there is a variety of habitat that ranges from savannah-like plains to lush forest and fresh-water pools. Of course, there are animals that exploit each of the types of habitat, too. And the whole time you’re riding around and looking at the animals, you can see the high, steep, circular walls of the crater in the distance and even an occasional string of Maasai herdsmen with some cattle. With its incredible space, its saturated tan and green color palette, and its animals, Ngorongoro is just unique and unforgettable.

It would be hard to describe all the animals we saw while we were going along in our van. The car was perfect for this safari because the roof had been modified to lift up about 2’; we could stand in the middle of the car and see the whole horizon in the shade. Not that we needed shade. It was so cold that we all huddled down in the van to stay warm.

From our car, the game viewing was great. One of the best sightings was the lions we came to about midday. There were four of them stretched out in a row right beside the road. These lions looked unique because they had splotches; our guide told us that savannah lions have a mottled coat for camouflage instead of the solid one we think of. I’d never seen lions in the wild like these. They’d obviously had a good meal that night and we sleeping so soundly they were absolutely oblivious to the tens of Landrovers crowding around them for a view. They reminded me of the way our cats would stretch out together in front of the fireplace during winter at home. One would occasionally move a paw, but for all intents and purposes, they were dead to the world. When we stopped by later in the afternoon, one of the two males managed to wake up enough to move a little. It looked across the savannah smelling, and then it headed off, first in a walk, then in a trot and then in a run. We thought it was hunting something, but it was apparently running to chase the scavengers away from its previous night’s kill. What a thrill to see this lion running across the savannah.

Another highlight was a stop by the hippo pool. The hippos were funny with their huge bodies supported on their stubby little legs. The hippos stayed in the water, flipping occasional showers up on their backs with their little tails to avoid sunburn. One hippo seemed to like being on its back with its four little legs in the air, but its belly was as pink as it could be, and it looked to me like it had already gotten a sunburn. As interesting as the hippos, there was a colossal mixed herd around the pool. Hundreds of zebra, antelope and wildebeest mingled on the plain around the water, and they were beautiful indeed with the deep blue of the crater walls in the background.

The plain was also full of scavengers and birds. We saw two types of jackals ranging around, and hyenas were very active, perhaps because of the overcast weather. I’d never had such a good view of a hyena. Lopsided, scraggly-furred, heavily-muscled with a vaguely hunchbacked aspect and big, black, empty eyes, these are creatures of nightmare. We also saw a lot of different birds. One of the most fun was a coucal that seemed rather slowed down by the cold. It sat on a snag beside our van and let us get close enough to thump its beak. My best bird photo ever. We also saw ostriches courting near our car, chasing each other with their wings and feathers fluffed out.

Eventually, we had to leave the crater floor and head to visit a Maasai village. We passed a couple of elephants grazing on the edge of a small forest and started up the crater wall. There was a beautiful view over the entire caldera as we ascended because of the deep blues of the distant walls and the deep browns of the plains. It was cold again at that top as we bounced over to visit a village we had heard was open to the public.

It was an interesting visit. The biggest advantage to visiting a village like this is that you can pay an entry fee and photograph everyone you want to instead of the constant hassle of asking to photograph the Maasai in public. With their purple clothes and heavily ornate jewelry, the Maasai are very photogenic but don’t like having their picture taken. At Ngorongoro, they have organized themselves to open a couple of their villages for visits and to share the proceeds with all the regional Masai. Ours was partly a village visit – we saw several huts and went in one of them – and partly a cultural display. The young men (“warriors”) performed a dance as we arrived, and when we in, another group chanted and did their well-known jumping dance, flapping their beads and collars as they shot straight up in the air. There was also a chant by the women.

After the show, we went into a Maasai hut to see its construction. Made of dung, straw and mud, it had a simple, practical, economical architecture that both Linda and I sensed as the achievement of eons of drylands experience. It was comfortable and functional in this landscape.

Before we left, we (Caroline and David) did some shopping. Rather than a cattle corral in the center of the bomba, as a Maasai village is called, there was big, tall, circular straw wall with handicrafts on it. I had the impression that they’d brought work from a lot of different villages to display here as there simply weren’t enough people in this village to have made all the bead and metal work on display. I took pictures while our driver sounded the alarm that the park was going to close before we got out. The Maasai men were pushing spears and clubs, but David was shopping for beads. Just before we left, David offered a low price for beads, and the guys had to run to the women to get approval of the price. Apparently, they make the spears and clubs and can sell them for what they want, but the women do the bead work and have final say there.

When we left, we flew along the rim road and down to the gate, losing our rear bumper to a particularly vicious pothole. We got there half-an-hour late but pleaded that we’d had car trouble, so they let us pass with minimum fuss. Ten minutes later, we were comfortably in the womb of the Ngorongoro Farmhouse.

The wonders of the service of this place continued. When we arrived, there was a woman waiting for us with warm, moist towels to rub off the plentiful dust we’d accumulated. After our arrival, she carted away a basket of used towels; she’d clearly greeted all the other guests and had been waiting for us to return. Caroline and Linda then went for showers while David and I went to a circus-like performance that included African music, tumbling, juggling, contortion, fire-eating and dancing by a man on huge stilts. What fun!

We dined in the chilly outdoors that night after David and I had showers. More fantastic food. Then we had our usual evening gin-and-tonic and downloaded the day’s photos onto the laptop while David went to sleep.