Ngorogoro Crater

This is catching up...back at the hotel in Arusha. Back to the Internet! There are three new posts before this one that you can read by scrolling down the page. 

A chilly night on the rim of the Ngorogoro Crater in the same campsite where LuRue and her friend Silver stayed 19 years earlier, but a lot different now. New buildings for cooking and eating as well as a large new field & a building with hot showers. This time there were no buffalos grazing inches from our heads during the night...the ranger keeps them away from the tents.

After breakfast Richard took us down into the crater. We saw most of the same animals already seen on the Serengeti, plus some new ones. To round out "The Big Five" (elephant, rhino, buffalo, lion, & leopard), we got quite a good, though distant, look at a black rhino. The rhino is highly protected from poaching as there is still an active market, especially Asia, for the horn as an aphrodisiac. There are currently a total of 16 rhinos in the crater, though only 7 can be seen. The other 9 are hidden away in clumps of trees as the mothers protect their babies until they are about a year old when they are able to fend for themselves. LuRue asked Richard if these are the only ones. He said no, there are 3 more in other areas. Only three??? Richard said there is a program underway to bring them back.


We came across an animal lying in the road & pulled up alongside it. At first we thought looking at a dead hyena was better than not seeing one at all. But then it blinked its eyes, stirred a bit, looked at us, & eventually got up and trotted off.

Another fun sighting was a warthog with three babies. Ugly as sin, but adorable anyhow. A couple of jackals scouting out the place among the zebras, and then our last stop was at a lake with hippos, though they soon submerged & swam to the other end.

The afternoon was mostly spent driving back to Arusha. After three days of natural parks, Masai villages, and agricultural settings, hitting the city traffic at rush hour was a bit jarring.

Richard helped us with reconfirming our flight tomorrow. The time seems to have been changed, but we've been calling & emailing between here, Dar es Salaam, and Minnesota to find out for sure. The technological age has certainly made a difference. We are hoping there are no glitches hooking up with our team.

Once in our room, the priority was a hot shower & getting out of clothes worn for four days in a row. We are now repacked & ready for the flight to Dar es Salaam to meet up with our Global Volunteers team. Richard is going to pick us up at 9:00am for the hour's drive to the airport.

Chapter Two is about to begin.