Dusty safari continued... crater and a few tse-tse flies

MEMORABLOG: 25-26.11.1998

Ngorongoro crater NP
Finally we came to Simba Camp on the crater rim. Ngorongoro is a huge crater, 20km in diameter... From rim you have great views on the crater and mountains beyond. We were quite high, as I believe altitude was around 2700m above sea level. Besides, we had the best hotel, a thousand stars one...  I thought on the rim will be quieter than in Serengeti... how I was wrong... again  Strange voices, sounds, roars, throughout the night... again... Night was very chilly, no wonder as were quite high up. Infrastructure in camp was almost non-existent. Yes, there were some shacks called toilets and something that resembled a shower.

After another tasty breakfast we headed down the crater. Road was narrow, twisty and steep... For fans of adrenaline... As soon as we came to the bottom, first animals emerged... I was astonished... The only animals that are apparently are missing are giraffes (the reason was that they can't climb down into the crater) and female elephants (???!! We saw plenty of elephants, i just wasn't particularly looking which sex they are .Incredible, this crater is just unbelievable, and concentration of animals is huge. You can see all different animals, we even saw some rhinos (from a DISTANCE). But we saw them. Only leopard was still hiding, that means no Big 5  Hyenas, lions, cheetahs... nothing was uncommon. We drove around the crater, and one could observe that there is really a lot of food for carnivores... Its like going to supermarket ;-) There is a lake in the middle of crater, so plenty of water is available (and therefore the shores are abundant with birds, also flamingos, and that was a friendly addition to mainly green and brown colors of the plains).

[b]Tarangire NP[/b]
After not so short drive from Ngorongoro we came close to Tarangire NP. This will be our last night out, and we were pleasantly surprised by accommodation. This time no tents, but a proper rooms with a proper showers. And everything clean. Wow, like we came back to the civilization... I had a first cold on my trip, and I was immensely annoying, so it was good to have a room to retreat from others... Here we found out that idea changing a safari company (and losing 100US$) was not so bad... There were some guys with our old company, and they were sleeping outside in tents... And that was not the end... The skies opened during the night, and they woke up half way in water... And they were not so happy with organization... but, but, they saw Lake Manyara NP (i believe with lions climbing on trees), where we just drove past...

Tarangire NP is renowned by two things - elephants and tse-tse flies (yep, those sleeping disease carrying ones). There were really plenty of elephants - in all shapes, sizes and ages... Incredible. At one point one bull even wanted to charge our car, and a few moments were really scary... (we approached too close a small family with some young ones). Lazy lions were all over, and even snakes were not uncommon... so, all in all a pleasant day, with many interesting moments... but frankly said, after a few days, all of us were a bit fed up with all the animals... so, i guess that it was just a right time to start going back to Arusha...