It was an early start this morning. We were out the door just a little after 6am, though we crashed pretty hard last night, so we had a decent amount of sleep all things considered. Despite our retreat being located just outside the crater when looking at a map, it took us about an hour to reach the road that actually descends into the crater. Just outside the entry gates, we saw a lot of baboons roaming around in gangs. Our driver told us to make sure we had all of our windows shut. They managed to commandeer this truck you see here.
In the hour or so drive we had been on, the vegetation and climate had changed quite dramatically. It’s like there are three different micro-climates in the area. We went into what seemed like a tropical rainforest. Mist and fog covered the area and obstructed our view. As we descended, things began to look drier, and once we reached the crater floor, the landscape resembled something more like Colorado or Wyoming. Since the Ngorongoro Crater is a conservation area and not a national park, Maasai tribespeople are allowed to live on the property as a sort of compromise with the government. We passed a few of their villages on our way down.
Surprisingly, the first animal we saw was a male lion. It was lying down on the ground, which is pretty standard. Given that they sleep about twenty hours a day, the odds of us seeing a lion actually moving were perhaps slim. This was confirmed maybe 30 minutes later, when we saw another lion passed out on the side of the road. The skies were still overcast, but just beginning to burn off. We were wearing long-sleeves since it was actually quite chilly, and we wouldn’t take them off until we were leaving the crater.
We saw numerous spotted hyenas throughout the day — much closer than the one we saw in Tarangire. We also saw a male ostrich get rejected by a female after doing some sort of dancing mating ritual. As anyone who’s been to a Billy Joel concert should know, not everyone can dance and impress. As the sun broke through the clouds, we ventured to the other side of the crater and saw a family of warthogs where the parents looked checked out while their six youthful warthog offspring ran around very rambunctiously.
We did see a few flamingoes near the water, but not in the abundant numbers that one might see in National Geographic. They were also a bit far away. We did, however, see a hippo on the move, which was an interesting sight. We saw a lot of hippos last year in Botswana, but they were primarily just lounging in the water and not very mobile. We saw one today that actually got up and started moving away from us toward the water. It was surprisingly quick for its size. The driver/guide said they can go up to 40kph.
Nicole and I were somewhat concerned that because we had been on other safaris relatively recently and seen quite a few animals, we might become jaded or burned out with our nearly weeklong safari in Tanzania. While it is true that after spending several hours getting thrown around in the LandCruiser, we get a bit of safari fatigue, I think we are finding new and interesting things each day, even if it is an animal that we’ve seen in great abundance previously. Take for example the zebra. These are a dime a dozen, but we saw them taking turns going to town on a rock today. When you have hooves, it can be hard to scratch that itch I suppose.
Around that same area, we saw perhaps thousands of wildebeest lining up and heading across our path as if they knew where they were going. I have a lot of questions about who gets chosen to lead, and whether or not they actually know where they’re going. This got us thinking about the “Great Migration,” which safari companies like to use as promotional material for trips to Tanzania. It refers to a mass migration of animals around the Serengeti. It’s supposed to be very dramatic this time of year because they have to cross rivers. The fascinating thing is, the “Great Migration,” actually happens throughout the entire year because they literally just make a circle around the national park, though sometimes dipping into southern Kenya and the bordering Maasai Mara National Reserve. When I first read about it, I thought it was some sort of trans-continental migration that one would need a small plane to attempt to track, when in fact it’s just a lap around the Serengeti. And now you know.
Because we were up so early, we got back to the Retreat at around 2pm and had a late lunch on the restaurant’s balcony. We were informed that we are the only people staying here, so the staff was extremely attentive. After our lunch, we walked around the property which is massive. They have some walking trails and a garden filled with everything from coffee to bananas to macadamia nuts and mint. They pride themselves on being farm-to-table and I think that is quite literal in this sense. They needn’t go far for the ingredients that we’ve seen in our meals. The food they have served us is quite gourmet, though I feel like we upset them last night when neither of us finished our vegetable soups. Due to the heightened attentiveness of the staff, about five different people came over to ask if something was wrong with the soup — each time making us feel a little bit more uncomfortable.
After our stroll around the property, we went back to our cottage and sat outside on our balcony to do some work. Yes, Nicole is working hard on all kinds of things including getting a link to her hit 2019 film, Across the Ocean up on the internet. The film festival circuit is pretty much dead now, and it’s perhaps time to just let the commoners have a look-see. We have a very long drive ahead of us tomorrow to the Serengeti because we have to retrace some of the roads around the crater that we were on today. We won’t get there until the afternoon, so it will be a somewhat abbreviated day in the Serengeti compared to the day after which is an entire day safari in the park. Wowzers. Hopefully Bricole, everyone’s favorite celebrity couple, don’t get too beat up in the ol’ LandCruiser.
passports & pepto bismol 