Day 12: Ngorongoro Crater

Katie feels a little better this morning but is still really coughy. Harry and Adrian still have little coughs and I still have a bit of head flu. Simon feels a bit chesty too this morning...what a healthy bunch we are!

We had breakfast (pancakes, Omelet, toast, juice and coffee/tea) at 5:30 before setting off just after 6:00am for an hrs drive to Ngorongoro Gate. The main crater is just 19km in diameter and according to the texts books offers the most famous wildlife refuge in the world.

After passing through the gate, we drove up to the first view point – a view over the Crater (or officially Caldera - basically this is a mountain which they believe was once bigger than Kilimanjaro which collapsed into itself and formed the lake which we can see today)...The Crater once belonged to the massai and in 1958 they waived their right to live there, though they still take their cattle down to the soda-licks around Lake Makat. Despite the weather being very thick cloud this morning, the view over the Caldera was incredible and we could see a rainbow across the lake which looked awesome. From here we headed to another part of the “crater” where we could see right across to the other side. We took a few funny photos of us jumping up in a star shape and fought off the maasai people trying to sell us spears “for our protection” apparently!!

From where we were standing we were looking down from the crater rim at about 8,000ft upon the near circular crater floor, an expense of flat, open grassland, forest and lake which is over 14km across (9miles). Around it stands a ring of now extinct volcanoes and within this arena there are claimed to be something like 20,000 large animals including rhinos, water buffalo and elephants as well as birds such as flamingoes and kites. Katie looked like a real explorer in her gear!!

Katie aka Dora the Explora!

Within another 30 minutes we had now seen the entire “big 5” within 48 hours (Leopard, Elephant, Rhino, Buffalo, Lion) amazing – we were told that often on a 4-5 day safari you won’t see all 5 so we are doing really well so far.

We stopped for lunch (and a needed toilet break at around 11:30) – lunch was weird today – peanut butter and jam sandwiches, banana, a nice drink, chicken and a boiled egg as well as a single boiled potato). Within minutes of us eating flocks of Kite birds swooped down on the other tourists who were attempting to eat their lunches outside of their 4x4s. This was a great opportunity to take some photos of the swooping almost eagle style birds and their tried their luck and skill at getting some lunch. Paul had a very close shave as some swopped in within inches of his head.

We took a scenic drive out of the crater stopping to take more scenic photos of the crater and some great shots of Wilderbeast and Zebras and arrived back at the camp site at around 4pm which gave us a couple of hours of daylight in which to chill out, have showers and get ready for dinner.

View from the top of the Ngorongoro Crater

We were all quite exhausted (not to mention covered in dust) today. We showered and then had a couple of beers with some popcorn snacks which the cooks had left out for us before eating dinner – Spag bol which was lovely.

Katie was feeling really rough again so went to bed not long after dinner. The rest of us stayed up for a couple more drinks – Konyagi of course, and a dew hands of the “finger game” in which Simon seemed to lose the most and therefore ended up consuming the most amount of Konyagi! I retired at around 9:30pm and everyone else around 10ish. Jan and Adrian managed to capture the end of a lightning storm which was surrounding the camp site.

Breakfast at 7 tomorrow for a 7:30 safari to Lake Manyara...