(all pictures are High res, for low res click here)
After lunch we headed to
Ngorongoro Crater National Park and our first stop was the visitor's center
.
As we continued on, we came to an overpass where we could look down into the
crater
, it was quite beautiful, and
we really didn't know what we were getting ourselves into. It was starting to
get late in the day, but before we went to
our lodge (an amazing sopa
lodge in the middle of nowhere), Vern thought it would be great to visit a real
Masai village. As we went into the village, the people began the welcome
dance (awesome video) and they desperately tried
to get vern to dance with them
. The clothing and jewelry
that the people are wearing are part of their daily garb
,
as we noticed Masai outside of this village dressed like this.
We also got to tour their
cow dung huts both outside
and inside, which was very
smoky.
Finally, I bought some jewelry and a machete and got one last photo of some of
the Masai men
and then
explained to them how the camera worked. It was really hard to understand
how removed these people were from everyone else, however they were
extremely
friendly and nice.
After the village, we head to our
lodge for a quick dinner, consumed a large amount of South African wine,
and sang a few songs in the bar. We had a really good time. The next day we got
up early and began our safari into the crater.
Almost immediately, we ran
into wildlife, starting with these cape buffaloes
. As we discovered, the plains
has a lot of neat birds
,
including my favorite - the
superb starling
. Again, we had another
surreal moment as we simply drove along and found 2 ostriches
and tons of impala
and zebras
everywhere (video). As we
drove along (video), we got word over the radio
that another van found a small group of female
lions so we headed over
there to check it out.
As we sat there patiently watching the lions, we noticed a elephant in the
distance (probably 1 or 2 km's away). Leo, our guide, moved the van backwards
about 10 feet and insured us that the elephant would eventually walk directly
behind us. Sure enough, 10 minutes later I was so close to this elephant that I
could probably touch it if I wanted to.
. Continuing on
,
we discovered the
wildebeest
.
At one point we found thousands of them migrating
across the crater (awesome video). On our way to the hippo pool, we located
a hyena
drinking some water
. Finally, we reached the pool
and we got to see these immense
hippos
sleeping
.
Moving on, this incredibly safari took us to the lake
where we got to see beautiful
flamingos
and
cunning jackals
as is seen in this video. After seeing animals
all morning, we were starving. So we drove to rest area to ate some lunch where
we got attacked by these
huge hawks. After
lunch, we started the drive out of the crater and we ran into some more animals
.
At last we were out of the crater and Leo pulled over so that I could take a
number of pictures to construct this panoramic view of the crater.
Our next stop was Tanagire National Park.
