With my granddaughter--Tanzania's incredible Ngorongoro Crater

view of the Ngorongoro Crater

Tanzania’s Ngorongoro Crater is one of the best places in the world to see wild animals.  It was created 2.5 million years ago when a volcano exploded violently, creating a caldera with a surface area of 200 square miles and sides that rise steeply 2000 feet above the crater floor.  The crater has many ecosystems—forest, marsh, savannah, lakes, dry lake beds, grassy hills and heavily forested upper reaches—that encourage a broad diversity of animals to live within it. 

Grants gazelles with baby

While it doesn’t have the range of antelope that you find in the Serengeti, it does have thousands of Grant’s and Thompson’s gazelles, wildebeest, and zebra, plus elephants, many hippos, lions and about 2 dozen of the desperately endangered black rhinos.  On earlier visits to the crater, I have seen cheetahs, but they seem to have moved out of the crater.  No one has seen them in several years.  The zebra, wildebeest, gazelles and hippos are permanent residents.  So are most of the other animals, but some of them roam in and out of the crater as they search for food.

Vervet monkey

Last year, my grandson and I saw 40 lions, including one pride of 15 lions, in one day.  We also saw a black rhino in the far distance.  This year, my granddaughter and I saw 22 lions and watched for nearly an hour as a black rhino approached us across the savannah from miles away, crossed in front of the 30 or more vehicles parked to photograph her, and lumbered off into the grassy plain until she became just a faraway dark speck. 

the rare black rhino--a female

We saw her early in the morning when she was quite active. 

the rhino-watchers

Dozens of animal-enthusiasts, were lined up on the dirt track later trying to get a glimpse and fuzzy photo of her, once again just a dark dot on the distant landscape.  I’ve seen black rhinos in the crater 3 times, but never this close, so it was a thrill.

This is a birdwatcher’s paradise also.  There are 430 species of birds in Kenya and Tanzania.  Many kinds of eagles, colorful kingfishers, lilac-breasted rollers (my favorite), so many different vultures.  It is always worth including bird-watching in your animal-viewing because they are beautiful and numerous.  

Martial eagle with kill