Our Christmas Eve game drive in the Ngorongoro Crater

 We woke up at 5:30 this morning so that we could get an early start on our game drive in the Ngorongoro Crater.  Hot bottles of tea and coffee were brought to our room, along with some small cookies to tide us over until our breakfast down in the crater. 

It was not yet sunrise at 6 AM when headed out in our safari vehicle toward the floor of the crater, driven by Paul.

The crater is the caldera left behind by the eruption of a giant volcano two million years ago, It5 is roughly a circle, roughly 100 miles square miles, with the floor being roughly 500 meters below the rim.  The walls are fairly steep, so much so, Paul told us, that giraffe cannot easily navigate them to enter the crater.  That, in addition to the relative paucity of acacia trees on the floor, is why giraffe are the one major African mammal that we would not see down in the crater. Rhino, however, ARE found in the crater and they rhino may walk up the crater walls to find euphorbia tree, against which they can rub despite the poisonous character of the sap


The floor of the crater is accessed by only six roads, each of them one-way up or one-way down.  Although Entamamu is a long bumpy road from the rim road, its entrance to the rim road is very close to the Seneto Descent Road on the western wall off the crater.  We could see a reflection of the sun breaking out on the horizon, albeit hidden from us by the clouds. as we drove down the descent road.       

We could see a large cluster of buffalo on the crater bottom

as well as this small group of gazelle as we reached the crater floor

but our guide noted a group of 30 to 40 hyenas running

So we set off to see what might have caused that. 


And we found just what he expected:  what we could see in the distance, albeit only through binoculars, was a lion feasting on a wildebeest carcass. A pack of hyenas had killed it, but then the lions moved in.  Paul told us that the hyenas do more of the hunting in the Crater, but that the king of beasts will often move in and seize the prey
A group of jackals approached close to lion, hoping to eat when the carcass is dropped; lions are not worried that the jackals might interfere, so they don’t chase the jackals away.

This is a pair of golden jackals (one of two kinds of jackals)

Eventually, the lions and lionesses moved away, their bellies full from gorging.  And, one by one, they plopped down within a few yards of  our vehicle

They were sniffing around each other, somewhat in courtship mode

One the males mounted one of the lionesses briefly; I missed THAT video

Here is herd of cape buffalo – Paul told us the same thing we has heard during our walking safari at Kruger nine years earlier:  they are Africa’s most dangerous animal. But, Paul said, in a herd they are less dangerous than a solitary older male. 

The buffalo stay in a big group, to protect their young, whom they will defend with horns; the wildebeest’s only defense is running

The zebra stay in family units of up to 20 to 30

Male elands are sitting behind the zebra

These are gray-crowned cranes (there are hippos in the water behind them in the second photo)

Thomson gazelle, discernible  by the black stripe

As we drove on, we passed some ostrich

The grass in this part of the crater is tall; fewer animals graze there because it is easier there for predators to conceal themselves to hunt

Paul noticed elephants in distance so we took off trying to get to them

The elephants are dark because of the type of grass they consume, and the soil in which is grows.  Elephants eat huge quantities of food  because they digest only 40% of what they consume.  They have no predators (though lions could take a baby).  Older elephants die when the last of their six sets of molars wear out; at that age, they will head to marshes where grasses are softer

The elephant’s trunk gathers grass; then the trunk is caught in snares, the tips lost and the elephant finds it harder to eat.  The tip of trunk also has organ whereby male can assess females’ readiness to mate

There were cranes perched atop these trees

and here they are in flight

The roads here are what the locals call “black cotton mud” – the mud if very messy and can trap vehicles; unlike the red clayey road into Entamamu

These are sacred ibis and blue heron; there is a hippo in the water behind them

and here is the heron  in flight

This is a  blacksmith plover

Here are Kori bustards, the largest flying bird, which are rare except in protected areas)

This is a group of hartebeest, with a wildebeest in the middle

and Grant’s gazelle                           

As we headed toward our breakfast site, we saw this fish eagle on the ground

And a whole lot of nests for yellow weaver birds in this tree

And the yellow weaver bird itself

As we sat down to eat, this yellow-vented bulbul perched right near us

It was time for breakfast, so Paul rolled out our chairs and table (complete with a tablecloth), and we had our excellent breakfast picnic.  We had breakfast at the camp the following morning, and I daresay the offerings down in the Crater were better

A kite was circling in the air above us, and we held our food close in light of a story we had heard the night before over dinner -- one or the other guests had been at this very picnic site that day and had a kite swoop down and grab her sandwich right out of her hand

There was a hippo print in the grass nearby

as well as hyena prints in the dried mud

Nearby birds included this superb starling

an Egyptian goose in the water, with a hippo behind to the left\

Here, an Egyptian goose was in the air

                As we left, the fish eagle was perched in a tree, looking for dinner in the pond

a group of crowned cranes walking together

Here are crowned cranes in the air

A wildebeest drinking

The wildebeest and the zebra tend to graze together, for safety.  The zebra have good eyesight and good memory, while the wildebeest have better hearing, so they can help each other in looking out for predators.  The wildebeest tend to eat short grasses, the zebra longer grasses

These are Grant’s gazelle  – they have big horns, no black stripe, and a white backside.  They don’t drink water – all their liquid comes from grass

Abdim’s stork (a/k/a white-bellied stork) with its red legs

We came upon a lioness with a mewling cub – one of the coolest sights and sounds we encountered the whole day.  This attracted a large crowd of safari vehicles

       

The lioness was panting hard – not just for cooling, but also to aid digestion

A second lioness joined them – there is a third, not here today, but no male; so maybe they are new to the crater. 

There’s no shade in the crater, so lions look for cool spots; note them right beside a Land Cruiser

In the distance, two rhinos walking to the right in distance beyond the gazelle

Off-road driving is not allowed within the Ngorongoro Crater, indeed anywhere within the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, so this was as close to rhino as we were able to get during our safari.  Once we got to the Serengeti, this rule would be relaxed.  But, there were no rhino there

There were hundreds of even thousands of lesser flamingos, colored a light pink flamingos, in the distant lake

The greater flamingos, which we would see in the Serengeti, are a more intense shade of pink
As we drive along, Paul called a stop to put up the roof of the safari vehicle, and just in time, as the rain came pouring down

We passed a smaller vehicle that had got stuck in the (black cotton) mud; our Land Cruiser pulled him out, using a broad piece of tough fabric as a rope that Paul was carrying; Paul clucked his tongue about a safari guide who had come out without the needed tools to get pulled out of the mud when needed

these are crowned plover 

and here the secretary bird, with a wildebeest in the foreground and a herd of buffalo behind

Hearing names such as Kori bustard, Secretary bird -- it was like reading the Babar books to our boys....


As we headed toward the ascent road, we passed a stand of yellow barked acacia – the only stand of trees in the crater

(here, seen from above as we drove back up toward the rim)

They are also called yellow fever tree because missionaries camped in swamp and blamed this tree for the yellow fever they developed

These trees are used by elephants who run against bark to remove bugs

This is a quinine tree

We saw elephants in the forest,

then in open

then damned if they didn’t saunter across the road right in front of us

The mother elephant’s right tusk is shorter, because the  elephant is right handed and uses that one more The  child is about 4 years old (they nurse until about that age); the mom is about 50 (note depression in her head)
Looking up the crater wall, we saw this lodge looming overhead – one of the two legacy ;dges built along the edge of the rim back when that was allowed

At this point, we paused for a picnic lunch 

A jackal came out to watch

And we passed some vervet monkeys

Finally, at about 4 PM, we headed up the block-paved Lerai Ascent Road

This is the only one of the five roads into and out of the Crater that is paved

It had been nearly ten hours of game drive, and I figured we had seen what there was to see

The pink flowers along the crater wall are Vanonia trees

Back up on the rim, we passed this center for shopping by local people, with a Maasai boma on left

Several of the bomas included houses with metal roofs as well as traditional houses.  One of the  controversies confronting the Maasai is that the government is talking about moving them out of their current residences around the rim, put of concern that the human population and their grazing cattle are is placing undue pressure on the game in the Ngorongoro Crater rim area.  When they were moved to here from the Serengeti in the 1950's they were promised they would never be moved again
We got back to the camp, and had time to relax before dinner.  Just before dinner, we were ttold about the plan for the following day.  The walk that we had originally planned, we were told – for me it looked to be a highlight of the trip – was inadvisable because some of the areas were too wet in light of all the rain.  So we would take a somewhat different walk. 

More about that, though, in the blog post about tomorrow