Day 194 - 195 Ngorongoro Crater

Thursday morning began our 8 day African safari adventure from Arusha. Liz and I, along with our driver, Stephano, and Kate and Randy Young (the wonderful couple we traveled with from Colorado), set off in our Serengeti Select (A safari company owned by the Simonson family that I highly recommend) Land Rover. Our first destination was the Ngorongoro Conservation Area located about 3 hours West of Arusha. This site is considered the ‘eighth wonder of the world,” because it is the largest unflooded caldera (collapsed volcano) that supports over 30,000 animals in the 12 mile stretch of prairie and water sources. This is probably the best place in Africa to view all the animals at one time. We drove along rim of the crater before we made a 2,000 foot descent into the crater. Throughout the day we saw 3 endangered black rhinos, a cheetah eating its kill (mouth full of blood), a pride of lions, a group of elephants, a hippo pool, hyena, flamingos in the lakes, zebras, wildebeests, gazelles, buffalo, and tons of birds and so much more. There are big herds of zebras, wildebeests, gazelles and buffalo everywhere, but it is like hunting for deer trying to spot the other animals. We all just keep the binoculars handy and the cameras ready to capture what we see. After a full day safari we headed up to our lodge on the crater of the rim. The balcony in our room overlooked the sunrise on the crater the next morning! Incredible!

Friday we descended down the other side of the crater to visit Olduvai Gorge which is a famous archaeological site, where they have discovered fossils and footprints from millions of year ago. We toured a small museum and had a short lecture from a guide. Then we made our way to Nduto Lodge. On our the way we saw hundreds of zebras and wildebeests and the Maasai people herding their cattle and living among them. It is just awesome! The best animals we spotted right before lunch was a group of 10 giraffes. Since we were outside the Crater and had not entered the Serengeti yet, we were able to drive off the main roads right up to the them! It is amazing how long you can sit and watch animals eat. Once we got settled in the lodge (in the middle of the park with signs warning us of wild animals outside our cabins), a group of giraffes came right up outside our room. I was within about 15 feet of the animals. We then headed out on our afternoon drive which was pretty quiet at the beginning (just your typical zebra and wildebeest) and finding the National Geographic magazine people filming - again! Our drive spotted three female lions right before dusk, so we drove off across a marsh to get a better look (with the film crew and everyone following us). We watched them for a while and then they started to move, one came within about 5 feet of an open air safari vehicle (you should have seen the people's faces) and then the one sitting closest to our vehicle walked up right next to it (Liz has video). We watched all three descend into the marsh and followed them until we spotted their cubs in among the reeds. To top off the afternoon drive, we witnessed a beautiful African sunset!

(NOTE: Okay, so we took thousands of pictures over the course of the safari and I tried to pick some of the highlights, however, if you log onto our facebook pages in the next couple days there will be more, I promise) ENJOY!