Category: Ngorongoro Crater

Crater of Cats

Crater of Cats

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This is not the best time to visit Ngorongoro, because so many of the animals have left during the dry season. And that meant for us, lots of cats!

Travel brochure description is a communication form that is often low on truth. And economies often motivate the travel companies to use the same description of a place – like Ngorongoro Crater – regardless of when during the year a visit might occur.

That might be understandable, given Americans penchant for exhaustive competition for the best price in travel, but once unmasked the reaction is often just as wrong. You can’t go on safari at any time of the year in East Africa and be visiting the many places you should each at their own best times.

Ngorongoro and the Serengeti have their lowest animal concentrations in the last half of the year, during northern Tanzania’s single one long dry season. But that doesn’t mean it’s a bad time to go. If you also visit the places that are at their best when you go (as we did in the Mara), you’ll find that even the less-than-best times elsewhere can be lots of fun!

Many animals don’t leave. Like the cats. Our visit to Ngorongoro started as we drove up the driveway to our lodge, Sopa, on the west side of the crater. We were greeted by two young male lions walking down!

Their bellies were empty and they looked a bit disgruntled. Their new manes were yet to color, so they had an appearance almost of being angel lions! Clearly, they had been recently kicked out of their pride, and they apparently were contemplating becoming the new pridemasters of Sopa Lodge!

Our game viewing in the crater was truly wonderful. It was cat dominated, although we did see several rhinos, many resident wildebeest and had a beautiful picnic breakfast beside a lake filled with hippo. In fact, the lake was so beautifully filled with hippo that Bill tried to capture the whole scene by stepping further and further away until we had to corral him back.

Even as we ate breakfast, a cat hunt unfolded within view! We watched several females who may have been hunting zebra and buffalo that were hardly 150 meters away.

We also found one of the big tuskers near the forest, which I regret to report is diminishing so quickly that I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s gone in just a few years.

And the scenery of the crater, of course, never gives up its premier position in our memories. Chris is a painter, and her sketchbook start to fill with several pages of beautiful crater landscapes.

But the cats abound! Males on kills, females with cubs, disgruntled youngsters… it was truly a crater of cats.

Dream Crater

Dream Crater

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The crater just never fails. Even now when drier than normal, we had the game drive of our lives!

As usual, we were first down. Which is a substantial effort, especially now in the cold season when three sweaters and gloves barely keeps you warm. The rim was shrouded in thick cloud and there was mist.

When we got down on the floor and headed towards the Mugie River before the ranger mound, it was still pretty dark.

I saw a lot of hyaena. Too many hyaena for there not to be a kill nearby. We moved further down the road, and hardly 100 meters of the road were nine lion in a food feast.

They had killed a young wildebeest and were dispatching it with great efficiency. One female had had her fill and walked away with blood on her chops. She got another 100m away and started to call for her cubs, who seemed to pop out of the tall grass. She took them further away.

But the remaining eight went at it with vigor. A yearling wildebeest is not enough for a pride this size, so they ate much more of the kill than they might normally. Before it was over, younger cubs were taking legs away.

Towards the end of the feast, we saw a magnificent male with a huge mane appear from the Mugie River and start towards the kill. The lions on the kill seemed nervous, and the male stopped several times, as if he were being very cautious about approaching.

At first I thought it was one of the brothers who live together near the river. If so, there would be, as Ari put it, a “rumble in the jungle.” We all got very excited, and the cubs seemed to move away from the kill as he approached.

But I was wrong. His belly was full and he must only have gone down to drink before returning. There were some grumbles, but he was licked by the youngsters that he would have killed had he not sired.

That was only the beginning of a fabulous crater game drive! I was with Nicky and Ezra. Ezra went nuts at the kill and Nicky went nuts later counting wildebeest! We saw a lot of wildebeest, zebra, gazelle, another lion with very young week-old cubs, two big tuskers and a cheetah!

The crater just never seems to fail. It’s drier than usual, as everything is, but there are good fresh water streams into the central lake. Despite it being very small, there were still flamingoes.

Our experience in Tarangire, Manyara and Ngorongoro, suggests that there were heavier than usual and later than usual rains, but that there is a still a serious deficit of rainfall over the last several years. Let’s hope it improves.

Crater Experience

Crater Experience

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Good Morning America named the crater one of the natural wonders of the world, which it is without doubt. But the fulsome experience includes much more than just this indescribable beauty.

I’ve heard several experts refer to the ancient Ngorongoro volcano as the world’s tallest structure, greater than Everest. I don’t know if this is science or valid extrapolation from the awesome mountain that remains for everyone to see, today.

Now seven smaller, six dormant volcanoes, Ngorongoro’s largest imploded caldera is the national park. The 7k drive from the gate to the viewpoint is often in deep fog, but we were fortunate as it was completely clear, the afternoon light deepening the forest colors.

The crater sits like a nearly perfectly round cup in a highland rain forest salad of towering trees draped with lianas, thick flowering bushes and radiantly green vines. Some of the most precious plants on earth, including the beautiful acacia lehai (which I call the bonsai acacia) decorate the rim. Even before we stopped at the viewpoint to peer 1800′ into the crater national park, we knew we had a glimpse of the Garden of Eden.

The next morning we descended before dawn. African dawns and sunsets are equatorially unique, and I wasn’t about to have my family miss them. The crater was still lush, with pockets of water across its veld, although drying slightly right to schedule from my last visit a few weeks before.

The caldera was packed with animals. We are at the edge of the prime season, and there were probably still 17 or 18 thousand of the peak 20,000 animals found here in February and March when the wildebeest normally calve. Most of these are wildebeest and zebra, but there are eland, hartebeest, hippo, and virtually all the predators, although at last count only one leopard. That’s because the single great yellow-barked acacia forest is dwindling fast. Each time I come, the forest is thinner.

We saw four (of the estimated 18-20) black rhino, 3 (of the estimated 9) lion families, and my favorite several (of the who knows how many) big tuskers unique to the crater. During the horrible years of poaching, some of the largest tusked elephant on earth descended for its natural protection, and they’ve remained despite the containment of poaching that now exists. The crater isn’t good elephant habitat, but it was secure, and even now they won’t leave. We saw at close range one of the great masters, his turned in tusks nearly touching the ground.

Scenery and animals are the primary component of an East African vacation, I concede. But despite my clients’ protestations, so is the lodging. I do everything possible to avoid revealing component costs, because it’s a turnoff to be sure when my potential client learns that a night at Crater Lodge can cost $1000 per person.

Is it worth it? I’m not one to err on the side of a feather bed, but I’ve learned through numerous safaris that if I just bury the costs in the overall safari, that a stay at Crater Lodge becomes one of the main highlights. It was truly for my family, young and old alike. Erin Barnard, my son’s significant other, has an expressive face that beams joy with the slightest smile. I asked her why she was smiling as she walked with Brad from her “cabin.” “This is over the top,” she exclaimed.

We guides often refer to Crater Lodge as “Maasai Versailles.” It is over the top. It is over priced. The architecture is wild and uncontained. But the staff is the finest in Africa, the food and chefs probably the finest, and there’s no question as you laze in your oversize Victorian bath above which hangs a gargantuan chandelier as you look out your floor to (18′) ceiling window over the crater, that it is the perfect complement to this “over the top” natural wonder.

Fabulous Crater

Fabulous Crater

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The crater never seems to fail me. But client patience made it better than ever.

We left Crater Lodge at 6 a.m. having cajoled our butlers to wake us shortly after 5 a.m. with hot drinks and the cookies of the day. It was dark until we reached the down-road gate around 6:30a.

Even on the rim road we saw game, as our Landcruisers had to stop several times for buffalo. But I could tell as we began the descent that it was going to be a good day.

The crater was beautifully green. The central lake was large and there were pockets of water all over the veld reflecting sunrise. When we got to the floor I noticed a new road into the forest and reckoned correctly that it was the newly opened bathrooms. Never pass a bathroom!

But what we found was a lot more exciting than new state-of-the-art choos. Not 20 yards away were two of the crater’s finest tuskers, one with a truly massive pair that turned back inwards like a pincer. Many of the largest tusked elephants wandered into the crater during the horrible years of poaching and never left. They found protection and today may be the largest tusked elephants left in Africa.

We immediately encountered hundreds of wildebeest, female herds with an equal number of calves and mothers. Umbilical chords shown on just a few, so I figured the birthing took place right on schedule at the end of February. Later in the day we would watch a distressed mother blarting wildly and running about as she tried to find a lost calf.

Hyaena were everywhere and many of my clients are so surprised when they see the randomly wandering hyaena, looking for everything like a simple dog on a walk. But that’s actually the way hyaenas usually behave: individually randomly walking across the veld, hoping to come upon something.

But it wasn’t too long afterwards that we saw the other side of hyaenas. Along the Mungi River we saw 8 lions on an eland kill. Now an eland weighs up to 1400 pounds. There were four mature females and four 6-month old lion cubs. It is remarkable how much meat a lion can chow down, but at most I figured the pride could consumer about 300 pounds maximum.

From the looks of the kill it had happened the day before. The lions had collapsed helter skelter with their big bellies in the grass, but one female wouldn’t leave the kill. She obviously couldn’t eat another bite, but she wouldn’t leave it to the jackals, birds and hyaenas that were circling.

They weren’t far from the river, and I’m sure they had already watered. Lions have to follow their chow-down with gallons of water in order to prime digestion. If they hadn’t, their faces would still have been bloody, and they weren’t. So clearly they had been down to the river, but returned to fend off the scavengers.

Finally, the cubs began to moan and started to walk towards the river with its abundant shade on their own. Three mature females followed, but the one stayed on the kill, now capable only of licking it.

Soon the hyaena were whooping. Two hyaena became three then four and they began circling the lion. I’m sure she could have chased them away, but perhaps the hassle was just to much. She got up, hyperventilating like all lions with recently filled bellies, and sauntered with the rest to the trees over the river.

The jackals went in immediately. Of course, they can get out just as quickly. It’s virtually impossible for a jackal to be touched by a lion. The hyaena were more cautious. Stretching upright in the grass, they looked around as if a fifth mature lion were waiting for them in the grass.

Then they moved in, and the food feast began. Blood squirted, pieces of meat and skin were thrown about, and the hyaena dug into the eland as if it were a dirt pile. Moments later, vultures came cruising in, which was remarkable in itself since we saw no trees except along the river, and these birds seemed to have come from the opposite direction.

Some safaris just luck out, and for certain this one did. But it takes more than luck to experience something like this. We were there for nearly 70 minutes. During the time our silent vehicles watched the event, another 8 vehicles came and went, spending just a few minutes it seemed. I’m always a bit worried that I push my clients too far, so at one point I asked if they were ready to leave.

Bryan Hassell said forcibly, “Let’s just wait a few minutes.” And sure enough, it was in those few minutes that the persistent female guard gave up, and the next chapter of the event began, something very precious to see.

I understand completely people who “want to see everything.” But I think it goes without saying that those who rush from place to place might be able to tick off a number of animals, but will likely never get to know them the way we did, today, in the crater.

Later we’d see more lion, serval, cheetah and enjoy a beautiful picnic breakfast by a lake with 14 hippo. Maybe, we could have seen even more, but I don’t think anyone would have traded in that hour plus at the lion kill for anything!