Ngorongoro Conservation Area
To the southeast of the Serengeti is Ngorongoro Conservation Area. This area includes the Ngorongoro Crater which is actually the caldera of an extinct volcano. Animals wander in and out, with some staying there most of the time. It is a great place to see animals up close in this relatively confined area. Because there are only a few roads in and out, it is easier for park officials to keep watch over rhinos. This is a good place to see the critically endangered black rhino in the wild. Because it gets busy with tourists, the visits to Ngorongoro are usually limited to two days.
Ngorongoro Conservation Area can be reached by car from Arusha, Tanzania. Kilimanjaro Airport, Tanzania has international connections from the US. It is about an hour from the large city of Arusha.
Trip Information
On this trip, I joined my husband and another couple who had climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro. This is an extension of that trip with Wilderness Travel. While they acclimated on Mt Meru and climbed Kilimanjaro, I went on extensions to Masai Mara in Kenya and Gorilla Trekking in Rwanda. We drove from Arusha, Tanzania. We went to Ngorongoro Crater and Serengeti National Park. While visiting Ngorongoro Conservation Area, we stayed in the Ngorongoro Highlands in a tented camp. We spent two days exploring wildlife in the Ngorongoro Crater. We also learned about Masai customs and visited a Masai home.
Ngorongoro Crater
The Ngorongoro caldera still has intact walls almost 2,000 feet high. The floor encompasses around 100 sq. miles, around 10 miles across. It has herds of wildebeests that increase during the annual migration. There are a lot of zebra and antelope here. There are four prides of lions here as well. Jackals and hyenas live here, but few cheetahs live inside the crater because of the lions. Cheetahs and leopards live in the surrounding highlands.
Rhinoceros on the Floor of Ngorongoro Caldera
We saw several black rhinos while visiting the crater. The rhino pictured above covered with birds eating the insects on it, was not very close to us, but one did walk really close to us in our safari vehicle. We did not see any rhinos elsewhere. Black rhinos are critically endangered because of poaching. Their horns are used in traditional medicine and are worth a lot of money. Rhinos have poor eyesight, but have good sense of smell and hearing. The black rhino is smaller than the white rhino and has a pointed lower lip used to grasp food. Only elephants are larger than rhinos. Male rhinoceroses can weigh around 3,500 pounds and can be 13 feet long. It is difficult to see them in the wild now, but a number of them have been introduced back in to the Ngorongoro Crater.
Masai in the Ngorongoro Highlands
Masai are native to East Africa. Many have been moved from national park area, but are allowed to live in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. However, they can’t keep all of their cattle in the area. They are allowed into the Ngorongoro Crater with small herds, but no one is allowed to spend the night in the crater.
A few Masai men came to our tented camp, Mysigio Camp, to demonstrate how young men become worriers, living by themselves in the bush. They built an enclosure with thorny bushes, killed (not while were watching), and roasted a goat over coals, pictured above right. They mixed wood from a tree to make a blood colored liquid and added it to the entrails of the goat to make soup. We had the opportunity to taste the soup. Masai men used to have to kill a lion to become a warrior, but today they have been encourage to not kill, but protect their cattle from lions.
The next evening, a group came to entertain us with dancing and singing pictured above. The following morning we visited with a local chief inside his mud hut. We found the interaction with the Masai very interesting.
Lions of the Ngorongoro Crater
Lions used to be plentiful in the crater, and then many died out. Their numbers are now large again, with four prides of lions, but most are closely related. There is a project, Serengeti Lion Project, to increase their numbers and diversity. See the link at the bottom of the post to donate.
Elephants in Ngorongoro
These elephants came very close to us while we were in our safari vehicle. Elephants are really large, males get to 13 feet high, and weigh around 14,000 pounds. Old male elephants come here to Ngorongoro Crater to die. Once their last set of teeth have worn down, they have six, they like to eat the soft grasses found here in marshy areas. Females come to visit also. Elderly females stay with their family group until they die at around 54 years or older. A number of elephants can be found in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area.
Ngorongoro Highlands Elephants
While driving through rain showers up into the Ngorongoro Highlands to get to our camp, we came across these two elephants. They are facing each other as they would if they were fighting, however they both seem happy like they are playing. They moved their tusks and trunks toward each other and back. Eventually, they separated and the one the left backed away.
Other Animals in the Ngorongoro Caldera
Many animals thrive here in the Ngorongoro Crater. In addition to many varieties of antelope, there are warthogs, wild dogs, both black backed and golden jackals, too many animals to name. There are also around 500 different varieties of birds, both permanent and that migrate through here. We took a lot of bird photos, because my husband really likes them. After this we went to the Serengeti National Park. My blogs of other areas visited on the same trip are Masai Mara in Kenya and Rwanda Gorilla Trekking.
References
National Geographic
Related Sites
Ngorongoro Conservation Area
Tour operator we used website:
http://www.wildernesstravel.com
look under trip extension: Tanzania Ngorongoro-Crater-Serengeti-Safari-Extension
