12) Ngorongoro Crater - Travel the World

Ngorongoro Crater

The Ngorongoro crater is the sixth largest caldera based on area in the world with a diameter of 16-19 km but it is the largest one actually unbroken and unflooded caldera in the world. It is an almost perfect circle with walls continuous and intact. Ezekiel told us that “Ngorongoro” means the sound that the bells make. At the bottom of the crater lies a huge lake which is the oasis supporting a large number of wildlife living there, ranging from black rhinos to elephants, buffalos, zebras, leopards, hippos, lions, wildebeest, warthogs, and many, many species of birds, like the endangered secretary bird that I really wanted to see, the endangered grey crowned crane and the near threatened (as of 2024) Kori bustard (called so, because it keeps forgetting where it laid its eggs and lies more in other nests, or so the story of Ezekiel goes haha) as well as flamingoes, vultures and many more raptors, ibises, and herons. The crater looks like a jungle on the sides, so lush and beautiful, so mystic with the fog engulfing it in the early morning, it’s magical, and the sounds of the jungle are just magical. I really wanted to stop for a bit and keep quiet and just listen but it didn’t happen, it was always full of tourists or, if no tourists, our group would talk.. But it was nevertheless, priceless to drive and just randomly see an elephant munching next to the road with a backdrop of the the crater’s jungle. Just pure magic for me. I tried capturing this in some of my photos, but i don’t know if i managed to. The issue we had, though, was the constant dust and ash wherever we drove, including the Serengeti and also Ngorongoro, we had inhaled so much that it really felt as if we had swallowed buckets of ash by the end of the whole trip. And the “African massage” was something I thought i’d get used to and i kind of did, but at the end I really had enough of it too. The SUV would jump left and right and up and down all the time, no break, you really had to hold on very tight or otherwise fall and hurt yourself or break your camera or something. It was officially not allowed to be standing up while driving but after a while, i couldn’t care less and i’d occasionally stand up to see better and to try and spot animals better because the windows were super dirty from the ash.

There, at the crater’s campsite, I had the best experience in my life, also the coldest of all nights there in Tanzania. Because it was at the top of the crater at about 2500m above sea level, the wind was merciless and the area where we camped was out in the open on a field with a huuuge tree in the middle. The campsite was basically kind of split in two halves, both with the same infrastructure – the meadow close to the tree where the tents were placed. And compared to the tents in Namibia, this tent on the Ngorongoro crater was like a 5-star hotel – so huge we could actually put the two mats next to each other and have enough space to enter without stepping on them and also enough space on one side to leave our bags. We did have to leave most of our luggage at the Charity Hotel on the first day due to lack of space in the SUV so we packed the most important things and travelled with a backpack each. Don’t ask me how you fit 1 week’s worth of stuff in a backpack but the packing master that I am, I managed haha 😀 So the meadow with the tents and then there’s a concrete building where the guides would cook and sleep and another for a dining area and behind them 2 small buildings – one for men and one for women, with showers and toilets. With one or two lights for each half of the campsite. The bathroom did not have hot water so we were pondering whether or not to skip the shower but I didn’t after all. It was just the fastest shower in history – a few drops of water enough to get me wet and then shower gel and then the fastest rinse in history, like 2 min, no hair washing.

The water wasn’t freezing but given the cold wind outside it wasn’t the best experience once you get out. The nice thing about the Tanzania trip was that the tents were magically “putting themselves up”, we didn’t have to set them up, someone had already done that always when we’d arrived for the night. So our tent was the first on the row of tents and that meant the one in the corner basically. Upon arrival on the other side of the camp, we saw an elephant happily grazing from the nearby bushes and immediately went to see it, of course staying at a good distance from it. But it was very close to the other half of the camp’s female facility. I had a call with my father and showed him the elephants. It was soo cool! Then, we went to have dinner, but first I walked around to take some photos of birds and then we had a very delicious dinner, consisting of soup and some cooked fish and vegetables. The issue was, that somehow we got assigned the table with other people and the soup was not enough for everyone and while me and Patricia didn’t feel shy to wait for everyone else to go first like Fill and Havi did, there was not enough soup for the two of them. Eventually, Ezekiel and the other guys made a bit extra but it wasn’t really the same. Anyway, the dinner was still nice and then we went to brush our teeth etc and go to sleep. And THEEEEEN.. then it was around 3AM when I woke up and Fill quietly called for me, whispering. When i answered he told me that there was something outside. We thought it was elephants because he heard heavy thuds right next to our tent. I was so angry that he didn’t wake me up, but at the same time scared because I had no idea what animal it was and was afraid to go out but I really had to go to the bathroom because the cold weather had sped up my call of nature. Fill also needed to go and we just had to.

So we grabbed a torch and carefully opened the tent. On the other side of the huge tree was the other camp and they also only had 2 lights and it was a good distance away. So what we managed to see was 4 sets of 4 legs on the other side of the tree close to the other camp. But we didn’t see the giraffes, only their legs and only in the middle and that was due to the light only illuminating that part, the rest was pitch black. The moon was suuuper red when it rose, i’ve never seen such a thing before, but later in the night, somehow it didn’t really illuminate the ground so we couldn’t see anything. We pointed the torch at the ground, didn’t want to startle the giraffes, who knows what can they do in panic from our lights – step on tents or i don’t know. So we ran as quickly as possible to the male bathroom, including me, and then right back to the tent. Then we laid down and stayed awake. Maybe 30 min later or I don’t know how long, we heard the giraffes coming back.

Sloooow, heavy steps.. thuds, coming closer.. “tup… tup… tup… tup…” and all around them is perfectly quiet.. and then.. right next to my head “tup..”. It made me so anxious, I had no idea if the giraffes see the tents and if they are obstacles for them so I actually (of course would’ve been useless) but I lifted my head and turned sideways on my arm, with my head up. A few more thuds and they went away. Later on, I remembered that Kennedy in Namibia told us that the steps of the elephants are practically silent and you cannot hear anything due to the pads on their feet, so it couldn’t have been an elephant anyway. These images are generated by AI but I tried to make them as close as possible to what the situation really was. It kind of worked. The rest of the night was cold but calm too.

In order to protect the black rhinos from poaching, the rangers of the Ngorongoro crater count the rhinos every single day and if a rhino attempts to climb the crater in specific locations (due to the lush jungle vegetation, it’s only possible to do so at a few places), the rangers block their way and shoo the animals back down. This allows them to better keep track of the rhinos in the area. The government wants to move the local Maasai away from the area also due to the threat of poaching – because Somali and Sudani people come to the crater and work with the Maasai local people to track and kill rhinos. On top of the crater, there is a wall with the names of many rangers and people who found their death while protecting the wildlife of the crater. It’s so sad and at the same time, I feel so happy and thankful that people like them exist.