©2002 Corbin Ball Associates

Ngorongoro Crater

Even with the rain, the view from the top of the crater is superb – 14 miles across, the world’s largest intact caldera, and an incredible ecosystem within. We drove along the rim counter-clockwise to the east side to the Ngorongoro Sopa Lodge, a beautiful lodge with an open air central reception area and huge rooms all with great views.

Aaron and I walked around a bit, watched international CNN in an upstairs viewing room overlooking the crater, had a quite dinner and turned in by 9:30.

Friday 15 March 2002

It is said that if a person had only one day to go on an African safari, that the Ngorongoro Crater is the place to go. The incredible abundance and diversity of wildlife is mind-boggling.  We switched to a Land Rover, as only 4-wheel drive vehicles are allowed in the crater. Tito was our driver, as Alli drove our luggage around to the Serena Ngorongoro Lodge for the night. 

Bird sightings included: francolin, augaur buzzard, fiscal shrike, yellow wagtail, rose-breasted long clay, Abdini’s stork, crowned craned, brown crested crane, sacred ibis, night heron, Egyptian geese, blacksmith plover, spoonbill stork, black backed heron, thousands of flamingo, dozens of ostrich (male and female), cattle egret, koori bustard (the world’s heaviest flighted bird), marabou stork, black kite, hooded vulture,  white-backed vulture, Nubian or lappet-faced vulture (the world’s largest vulture), black-headed heron, hammer cop, spar-winged geese, black-bellied bustard, European stork, fish eagle, brown coo-coo, and superb starlings.

Animal sightings included: zebras (1,000’s), wildebeests (1,000’s), Coke’s hartebeest, cape buffalo (100’s), grants gazelle, Thompson’s gazelle, eland (the largest of the antelope), waterbuck (defassa race), dozens of elephant, dozens of hippo, hyenas, warthogs, 4 black rhinos, 5 lion (4 male and 1 female), golden jackal, and black-backed jackal.   

The highlights of the day included a “scavenger party” which started with a sighting of a spotted hyena pulling a partial carcass of a baby hippo tugged at the other end by two golden jackals. In the near distance, about 30 vultures watched the action. Eventually, the hyena gave up the tug war, probably because its stomach was already well beyond full. This left the jackals to fend off the vultures, who immediately started edging in keeping while keeping just out of biting range. As the jackals nervously gobbled as much hippo as they could, a large white backed vulture arched its feathers and dropped his head in a menacing a manner. At this point, one of the jackals gave up and walked a distance away. Now it was just a manner of time. The vultures became more menacing and finally had the carcass to themselves in a feeding orgy of feathers. After about 5 minutes, a third jackal dove into the fray, snapping and biting, succeeding in chasing all of them away for a few minutes of eating pleasure.

Another highlight was to see 4 mature male lions, in the heat of the day, lying in the middle of the road. As the safari rigs approached, they simple moved up next to them for the shade. We literally could have petted their backs as they walked by our rig. Majestic creatures, with huge canine daggers, panting in the heat of the day.

The black rhinos were also quite impressive despite their lack of activity and distance (about 100 meters away) because of their rarity.

A herd of about 30 cape buffalo (one of the most belligerent of all the animals) gave us cold, steely glare as if to dare us to come closer.

Also, the thousands of flamingos make a collective buzz like the bleating of a hundred lambs, gathered at the soda lakeside, sifting the water for algae. Some were ruffling their wings in a fresh water stream the flowed into the lake. Others flapped their pink wings while other flew by stretched out like an arrow.

We had an elaborate box lunch prepared by the hotel, by a fresh water pool complete with hippo and shade tree, along with about 40 other safaris rigs. Eating outside the vehicles was prohibited as the birds (the brown kites) would swoop down to steal.

The last part of the crater drive was through the yellow fever tree (yellow barked acacia tree) forest. These sinister looking trees, with a sickly yellow-green bark and a very gnarly trunk base, grow in swampy areas and were thought by the early settlers to cause yellow fever (rather than mosquito that lives in this same swamp). I had just been pouring rain less than an hour ago, but we were lucky to avoid almost all of the rains, at the tree branches steamed in the sun.

Then for the very steep climb out of the crater, through candelabra euphorbia trees to the Serena Ngorongoro Lodge , a beautiful, stone structure designed to blend in well with the crater wall, and is hardly visible at all from the floor. The lodge has a beautiful view of the crater and the restaurant and bar take great advantage of this.

After another buffet dinner at 7:30 (the standard for all of these lodges), we retired to our room to watch the fabulous starry sky from our balcony, with the big dipper in view at the north, and the brilliant Milky Way stretching down the Southern Cross.

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