The Ngorongoro Crater

For our final tourist sightseeing of the trip, we dusted off our work clothes and hopped into safari jeeps for the journey to the Ngorongoro Crater area. Looking on a map, the distance between Moshi and the park is a cool 300km; on dust covered, potholed roads, the journey took us nearly seven hours.

All that aside, we checked into our accommodation, had a very brief sleep and hit the park for an early sunrise safari the next morning. Along the way, the nomadic Maasai Mara people ambled along the road, herding their livestock through the green valleys. Fun fact: Ngorongoro is a Maasai word and translates roughly to the sound produced by a cowbell.

Onwards! The crater that houses the park is a geological wonder, the world's largest inactive, intact and unfilled volcanic caldera, 100 square miles wide. Think Santorini without the water and bigger. The park is part of the Northern Safari Circuit, and is one of four parks in Tanzania. If you weren't travelling with a group of say, 29 students, you might take the journey from Serengeti to Ngorongoro to Taragire to Lake Manyara National Park. I've added it to my to-travel list.

On our way into the crater, we traversed a road that wound in, down and around to the crater's floor, with a sharp drop into the crater itself on one side. This involved a rather dodgy experience with a jackknifed semi, the men who pushed it off to the side and its near-slide off the gaping ledge. But everyone lived to see another day and so we moved on.

First animal sighting, our only giraffe of the trip on the way down into the caldera:

The lack of tall trees keeps giraffes and, usually, elephants (but it was our lucky day!) away from the inner workings of the park. In fact, the landscape looked distinctly unlike our safari in South Africa; the land was green and swampy in places, with a huge pond where the hippos convened and a large area for birds of various feathers.

 Elephants!

 Zebras

 

 Wildebeest completing part of their great migration

Hippos lurking in the pond beneath. Fun fact: hippos kill more people every year on the African continent more than any other animal.

 Just to end the day right, we stealthily steered past these beauties having a lounge:

 

Not pictured: the rhinos we saw at a distance and the buffalo travelling in large herds. Four of the big five sighted, woo! We ended our day on safari with more stunning views before making the epic seven hour journey back to Moshi.

 

It was kind of the perfect day.