kearneyjourney

Since the hotel was so large, they had a special section of the grounds for the tour guides, so Ray was not in the hotel with us, nor was he allowed to have meals with us, which definitely subtracted from our experience. He met us at the hotel entrance at 08:00 for our descent to the crater floor. The Ngorongoro crater is a caldera left over from a massive volcanic mountain that some estimate to have been around 4500 meters high; and some even think it may have been as large as or even larger than Kilimanjaro. The Sopa Lodge is at 2400 meters, so this is the top of the rim that has remained after the crater was formed some two million years ago: Ngorongoro Crater Wiki

Since the time of year was in between rainy and dry seasons, we had beautiful, sunny weather, but the vegetation in the crater was still green and lush. As we started out, however, the temperatures were quite cool at 2400 meters, only getting warmer as we drove down the road to the floor of the caldera.

For most of our time in Tanzania, we did not feel too overwhelmed by other tourists and had steered clear of the busiest, most traveled routes. But that changed definitively upon our descent into the crater: safari vehicles were everywhere and naturally converged in large numbers on interesting sites where lions or rhinos had been spotted. Moreover, the limited dimensions of the crater (in comparison to the Serengeti) meant that the number of vehicles per square kilometer was simply higher. This was the kind of bumper-to-bumper game-viewing I had read about. There were two times when at least a dozen or more cars lined up to focus on a specific sight: one was a group of four lions (one female, three male – an odd kind of feline polyandry!) fresh from feeding at a zebra kill; and the other was a rhino spotted about 500 meters off the main road. Not an impressive sight, but sufficient for all to tick that animal off their list and claim to have seen the big five. As a side note, all who are obsessed with seeing “The Big Five” while in Africa, the degree of difficulty can be easily ordered as follows: 1) elephants (easiest); 2) buffalo (next easiest); 3) lions (medium); 4) leopards (rather difficult); 5) rhino (most difficult).

Actually, we didn’t really care too much about ticking off the animals on this list and created an alternative “Big Five”, which were even more important to us: 1) Cheetahs; 2) Hyenas; 3) Serval Cats; 4) Kori Bustards and 5) Dung Beetles. We saw all five, but did not get a very good picture of the Serval Cat, which was too quick to retreat into the brush when we spotted it.

Regarding the rhino, we got a much better view of it later in the afternoon when the crowds had dispersed. Near the lions, we also saw a hyena carrying off a leg of zebra, which we assumed had been heisted from the lions’ kill. Hyenas were generally a lot more numerous in the crater than in the other parks we had visited. But my favorite sighting was a pair of dung beetles rolling a ball of wildebeest dung down the road. While we were filming it, a Leopard Tours vehicle sped by and smashed the ball of dung, which effectively negated a morning of work for the dung beetles, which both miraculously survived the incident. However, this flat pancake of dung would no longer roll and was essentially immobile for the beetles. We departed and never knew the end of this insect drama.

The weather remained great the whole day. At one point, we drove to the top of a hill that is presumed to have been the peak of the mountain before it collapsed. We had our box lunch at a picnic site packed with other safari vehicles. Ray exhorted us to stay in the car and eat, as there were at least ten or more Black Kites swooping over the grounds and dive-bombing careless tourists for their food. I saw one bird attack the hand of an oblivious picnicker holding a piece of chicken. Ray was not so worried that the would-be-thieves might steal something from us, but that their vicious claws might inflict a wound and occasion a quick trip to the hospital. At one point, Ray taught us the so-called “Jambo Song”, which goes like this:

Jambo, Jambo Bwana
Habari gani, Nzuri Sana
Wageni, Mwakaribishwa
Tanzania yetu, Hakuna Matata

After our day in the crater, we returned to the Sopa Lodge and spent some time enjoying the sun and drinks on the west-facing terrace of the lodge. There was a beautiful pool; but the temperatures at that altitude did not really make us want to jump in.

At dinner, a newly-formed musical group consisting of Lodge personnel came into the dining hall and sang some very nice renditions of African songs. Gertrude tried to get their CD; but since they were so new, they hadn’t recorded anything yet.

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 16th, 2011 at 12:30 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.