Ngorongoro Crater

A slightly later start today, so we breakfast at the lodge before leaving for the Ngorongoro crater. We’ll pass through the Serengeti on the way, with more opportunities for game spotting. We’re quite blasé now about hippos, zebras, giraffes and antelopes – we’re on the hunt for spotty things, a better leopard sighting or a cheetah. Alex spots a spotty thing and Isaac manoeuvres the truck towards it – it’s a serval cat, small and very shy, and soon retreats into the grass.

Isaac drives us to a family of lions, the male lying a little apart from the females and having a good wash just like a domestic cat. He’s entirely undisturbed even though we drive to within a couple of metres of him. There are three females, one of them suckling four cubs which are surprisingly dark in comparison and look quite young.

We don’t stay long as there’s talk of a cheetah, which turns out to be correct – it’s perched atop a mound watching the world go by and, once again, doesn’t seem to mind our presence at all.  A short distance away there are two more, which we approach even closer. They are magnificent, and a fitting finale to the Serengeti.

 

The Ngorongoro crater has a lot to live up to, but we start strongly with a lioness and our first hyenas. We stop to let a herd of wildebeest pass on its way to a waterhole and then continue towards the “round table” – an elevated point where we will stop for lunch.

By another waterhole Isaac spots more hyenas (his favourite) and a couple of white storks and then a hippo ambles out of the water.

We also see some warthogs grazing on bent knees and a ground hornbill. We are about to stop for lunch when Isaac realises that there is a carcase of a recent kill below us, and we drive down to take a look. It’s the remains of a buffalo, being feasted on by spotted hyenas, a jackal and some vultures. It’s pretty gruesome and a bit smelly, but also fascinating.

 

After lunch we get up close and personal with a herd of zebras and spot a kori bustard and a pair of black crowned cranes, and pass a tree absolutely full of weaver bird nests. 

We leave the plane and enter the forest, looking for the elusive rhino which is the only one of the Big 5 we haven’t seen. We find some elephant, but there is no sign of rhino – then we spot a group of vehicles and pull over to see what they’ve found. It’s a caracal, a rare and elusive cat, but we don’t have a great view. Then it stands up, stretches, and walks straight past us.

We haven’t found a rhino but it’s time to leave the crater, which has one last surprise in store for us. As we ascend the track to the rim, we meet a massive bull elephant which first poses for a photo beside the panoramic view of the crater and then follows us up the road.

We’re staying at the Karatu Simba Lodge tonight, which is on top of a hill in countryside that looks more like rural France than Africa, among neat fields of crops. The rooms are neatly arranged in rows and Alex’s rondavel is opposite our “tent” – a permanent structure with canvas walls, patio doors along one side and a stone-built bathroom, all under a corrugated iron roof. It’s another eco lodge and I manage to trip the electrics by using a hairdyer, having missed the instruction not to do so because we arrived in the second vehicle. The altitude makes it chilly here at night, so it’s a welcome treat to find a hot water bottle had been placed in our beds when they turned down our mosquito nets.