Africa: Ngorongoro Crater - Tanzania

We woke up in time to see the sun rising over the crest of the crater and packed up our bags before breakfast. We were heading down into the crater for the morning and then off to the Serengeti from there.

We ate quickly, jumped into the jeep and started our way down into the Crater. It is huge and is famous for its Rhinos, which they have over 50 in the park, so we were on the lookout for one. Once we got to the crater floor there were mountains all around us with huge rolls of mist cascading down them.

There was a small grove of trees creating some nice shade where a lioness was resting below a bush right on the outskirts of the trees. There might have been a whole pride of lions but we could only see the one and it was too far away to tell if there were more. We kept moving and kept an eye on the horizon for a horn sticking out of the tall grass. As we were driving a Caracal dashed out onto the road ahead of us. He was far enough ahead that Latow had time to stop and the Caracal started walking up the road like we weren't even there. 

We followed slowly behind him and he would turn around and look back at us to see if we were a threat or not. Soon he turned into the tall grass and continued his walk parallel with the road stopping every once and awhile to check on us. 

He looked and acted a little like a house cat but in reality they are great hunters and can leap up to ten feet to catch guinea fowl and other low flying birds. He was more curious than afraid of us and he sat down on his hind legs and stared right at us trying to figure us out.

After staring us down he got back up and walked away from the road into the tall grass plains that cover most of the crater floor. We kept on the move and ran into a big herd of Water Buffalo all grazing and swatting away flies.

Once the herd moved off of the road we were able to keep going and right up the road we ran into an even bigger herd of Zebra. There was over a hundred, maybe two hundred, making for a dizzying array of black and white stripes.

  
A few zebras were rolling around in the dirt like dogs. It was really funny to watch with their legs flailing all over the place.

And there was even a small fight breaking out between two of the larger zebra. But my favourite one was a blonde colt trying to graze despite all the chaos.

 After the zebras cleared off of the road we kept going across the yellow plains and blue mountains. It looked almost like a painting as we drove through the winding roads of the crater.

We stopped at a small lake full of hippos. They were all just lying in the water occasionally splashing themselves with their tails to keep from drying up in the sun. 

Then we came across a few small jackals like the ones we had seen in Masai Mara but these ones were Golden Jackals instead of Silver Backed Jackals.

After a while we stopped at small park rest area to stretch our legs and use the restrooms. There were a few picnic tables overlooking a lake with some hippos floating about. We made sure to keep our distance from the hippos because they can be quite unpredictable sometimes.

We got back in the jeep and started towards another corner of the crater. Suddenly Latow stopped the jeep as he had spotted something way off in the distance. There were three rhinos that were almost impossible to see so it was amazing Latow even spotted them in the first place. They kind of looked like little grey blobs even with the binoculars but there was no way to get any closer without driving off the path which we weren't allowed to do. After we waited a while to see if they might come closer we gave up and headed out of the park climbing up the side of the crater looking for them all the way. 

We had lunch up above on one of the mountains overlooking the crater which was fun as a Marabou Stork tried to share our food and we had to keep watch on the sky as kite birds wanted some too. After our picnic it was back in the jeep for our journey to the Serengeti.