June 10, 2017 - Full day game drive in Ngorongoro Crater

Ngorongoro Crater is an unparalleled beauty of one of the world's most unchanged wildlife sanctuaries.  It is the world's largest inactive, intact and unfilled volcanic large crater. The crater, which formed when a large volcano exploded and collapsed on itself two to three million years ago, is 610 meters (2,000 feet) deep and its floor covers 260 square kilometers (100 square miles). The elevation of the crater floor is 1,800 meters (5,900 feet) above sea level. The Crater was voted by Seven Natural Wonders as one of the Seven Natural Wonders of Africa in February 2013.

Approximately 25,000 large animals lived in the crater. Large animals in the crater include rhinoceros, African buffalo, and hippopotamus.  There are a lot of wildebeests, zebras, Grant’s gazelles, Thomson’s gazelles, jackals and warthogs. There are lions, hyenas and many different types of birds. There is no elephant, giraffe and leopard, due to lack of trees in the crater.

There are 2 one-way entrances and 2 one-way exits for accessing and leaving the crater.  The entrance we took descending about 2000 ft in less than 2 miles.  Only 4-wheel drive vehicles are allowed.  Right after we entered the crater, we can see a lot of wildebeests and zebras.

It is a large area to cover and so we just let our guide to drive around based on his own preference.  We did spot a rhinoceros in distance.  Even my 70/200 tele-lens was not powerful enough to get a good shot of him (or her).  

We also saw some hippos and they were in a pool with much cleaner water, therefore, they looked much nicer.  

Wildebeests, zebras, and gazelles were everywhere, and they just stayed at wherever (sometime in the middle of the road) and acted like that this is truly their home.  

From distance in the Lake Magadi we saw flocks of pink flamingos.  According to our guide, this is one of flamingo’s feeding grounds. These pink flamingos are from the breeding ground in nearby Lake Natron.  Unfortunately, there is no road can allow us to get close to Lake Magadi.  We could only look at them from distance and try to take photos without too much success. 

We had boxed lunch in one of the picnic area nearby the hippo pool. It was a peaceful place where one can get off safari vechile and walking around.  There is a clear water lake with a lot of hippos occasional poking out of the water.  We had a wonderful time there and took a lot of photos with us in them. 

On our way back, we saw an interesting scene with a bunch of birds on a small tree and all crying for food.  Periodically, we could see adult birds bringing worms to feed baby birds.  It was an extremely noisy bunch of baby birds. 

This full day game drive concluded our Tanzania Safari tour.  We were extremely happy with the whole tour and enjoyed it very much.