Living the Good Life: Ngorongoro Crater

Hey Guys!

Here is the second installment of our awesome Tanzanian safari. We really enjoyed the Ngorongoro Crater, it is just so insanely beautiful. It is thought to have formed 2.5 million years ago when a large volcano erupted and collapsed in on itself, leaving the unbroken caldera as a huge remnant. The views from the crater rim are truly spectacular (more on this later!)

Soaking up some great views on our first encounter with the crater. Looking for rhinos and elephants through the binoculars. The rhinos are quite shy, so we took advantage of the chance to see them from up here.

Lake Magadi is a soda lake that is permanently in the crater. There had been a lot of rain last month, so some of the roads were more boggy than usual.

Here is a Maasai Boma (village). The Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA) is not a national park, so the original inhabitants of the land (the Maasai) are allowed to stay here and keep living their traditional ways of life. It seemed to be working quite well, the Maasai have ways of limiting predation from the big cats on their livestock and they keep the grass chewed down which helps keep the rangeland healthy. In the Serengeti, where no one is allowed to graze livestock, the TZ National Park Association (TANAPA) has been making use of controlled grass burns to revitalize the grass.

It is still a little terrifying for me to think about the fact that you could get eaten by a lion or trampled by a buffalo while herding your cows or goats around. We saw lots of herds in the care of kids under 10! No helicopter parenting here, just go watch these goats and let me know if the lions are getting uppity.

Our pictures of safari wildlife and Maasai herds are interspersed because that is how is actually was. There would be a herd of zebra, then goats, then 4 giraffe, then cows. I can only imagine the problems they have with wildlife reservoirs of disease!

We visited a Maasai Boma while we were in the NCA as well. Here they are performing a welcome dance as we got out of the vehicle.

We joined in, trying to go along with the song and dance but I was off by a few beats.

Jared practising his dance moves, which for guys is a lot of jumping.

We visited the school that is in the village. Proceeds of the tourists visits goes to paying for an outside teacher for English.

This picture was taken while we were inside a traditional Maasai hut, with a fire going in the middle. It would sleep 6 people, and it certainly was not spacious. It was hot as blazes in there, but apparently it gets quite cold here at night, so they keep the fires going all day. This man was explaining how they construct the mud huts and do their cooking.

Maasai woman with her child

We had walked around the village once, and I had talked to almost everyone except this group of older men and women. After seeing how hard this lifestyle is, I think anyone that can have grey hairs in this village is worth talking to. I got talking to an older lady, and the guy to my right was translating for me. She offered me some milk from her calabash (pictured). After our experience in Uganda, we knew that the offering of food was very ingrained in the culture, and that to refuse was potentially a bit rude. Even though I didn't really want to do it, I took a little sip. Jared told me after how grossed out he was by me.

February is also when the wildebeest start calving. In a period of 3 weeks, 80% of them will calve. Strength in numbers, that kind of thing. We drove through some massive herds of wildebeest on the plains between the Serengeti NP and the Ngorongoro CA.

There was a dead gazelle here that all the vultures were fighting over. It was pretty amazing to see their dominance displays as they ripped off hunks of meat and tried to scare away their fellow vulture. At one point, the got the rumen out, and that was a feeding frenzy. They were pretty jacked for that! Jared and I were less jacked when we got rumen in our soup (mostly in Uganda).

On our return to the crater (after Serengeti), we stayed at the Ngorongoro Wildlife Lodge. This was an amazing place. Hands down the fanciest place we have ever stayed. The views over the crater were phenomenal.

We got up early the next day to have a private little breakfast, watching the sun rise. So spectacular.

That morning, we descended down into the crater to do a game drive. The Ngorongoro Crater is a bit like a 'fishbowl' because there are quite a few animals down there, and some never leave (like the rhinos).

This was the scene of a very close call for some zebras. They were munching along, working their way closer and closer to two lioness (in the small ditch on the left). The lionesses realized they were inching closer, and both had woken up from their lazy sleep, eyes and ears erect. Then a wildebeest started making noise from the other side, and the zebras seemed to clue in before trotting away.