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Ngorongoro Crater
Wednesday, August 23 One of two lionesses that we saw chase down a Thomson's Gazelle. |
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Ngorongoro Crater
Wednesday, August 23 One of two lionesses that we saw chase down a Thomson's Gazelle. |
| We woke up around 6:30 to a cold room. The Crater Lodge rooms are heated with fireplaces that do a nice job in the evenings, but by morning aren't providing much heat. Fortunately, the rooms have electric blankets so it was only getting out of bed that was tough. The hot tea and coffee brought to the room made it a little easier to get going. |  |
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Diana and Stacia (my daughter) decided to take the day off from game drives, so Scott and I had one vehicle to ourselves. It takes about 45 minutes to drive down to the crater floor from the rim. The wealth of wildlife in the crater is amazing. We saw herds of cape buffalo and wildebeest, many lions (although no males close up and no young cubs - these would have to wait until the Serengeti), hippos, rhinos, many birds, and even a python. |
| We spotted a lioness shortly after going down in the crater and watched her for a while. After driving around for a while longer, we spotted two more lionesses that were hunting some zebra. The zebra never got close enough, but a pair of Thomson's gazelles came up from a river ravine almost right next to the lionesses. They had no where to go and one was soon the lionesses' lunch. |  |
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We drove around to the other side of the ravine and had an excellent view of the lionesses devouring the gazelle. This was a very interesting, if somewhat gruesome spectacle. They seem to eat almost everything although the contents of the bowels was something she left behind - she'd suck out the intestines and spit it out then consume what was left. Not something you'd want to see right after eating. |
| We met back with the other vehicle at one of the picnic areas. Our "box lunch" prepared by Ngorongoro Crater Lodge consisted of many different choices of excellent food. I had chicken and rice wrapped in pita bread. We just had to watch out for the eagles which would swoop down to grab your food if you weren't careful. |  |
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We spent the afternoon looking for other interesting wildlife,
hoping to see a male lion or perhaps a cheetah. We didn't find any more
cats, but we did find another watering hole with hippos. I was lucky to
catch one yawning. They have quite a mouth. As we drove back to the
forested area where the road leads out of the crater, our guide spotted
three Rhinos heading in the general direction of the forest. They were
still too far away to get a good look at, so we spent some time in the
forest photographing the Vervet monkeys.
It was almost time to leave the park, but our guide noticed that the Rhinos were getting close enough to see, so we drive down the road that we expected them to cross. Sure enough, they walked across the road not more than 30 feet from us. |
| As we started to leave, the large male Rhino (about
2/3 the size of the Land Rover we were in) moved back into the road in front of
us and blocked our way. We had to wait a couple minutes for him to move along.
Our driver was ready to hit the gas if the Rhino became more aggressive. |
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The Ngorongoro Crater park requires that all vehicles
are out of the crater by 6:00 PM or the drivers and safari companies risk stiff
penalties. We had cut our timing pretty close in order to get a glimpse of the
Rhinos heading to the forest. The added delay caused by the male Rhino cut our
timing even closer. We raced for the crater exit and made it through the gate
with two minutes to spare. There were at least four vehicles behind us that
probably didn't make it.
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