Sunday, August 14, 2011

Tanzania 2011, Day 9

I'm sitting in a very fancy hotel (well... 'fancy' relative to our previous accommodation) in Arusha, struggling with the internet connection. It seems to let me post blogs without an argument but when I try to check my personal email, it gives me the run-around: 'loading...' 'still loading...' & then finally 'there appears to be a problem with your internet connection. Please try loading the page again.' Nasty. So I shall work on my blog post & try email a little later. We honestly don't realize how fortunate we are with internet connectivity in North America.

Even if Tanzania is not blessed with easy access to technology, it is certainly blessed with natural wonders. This was our day to visit Ngorogoro crater. Our driver Kanuth picked us up at the hotel & we drove for perhaps half an hour to the conservation area gate. Ngorogoro is a hot spot for tourists & the government attempts to control access quite carefully. So it took 15 minutes or so to do the paperwork, another 15 minutes or so of climbing along a bumpy & dusty road, and then quite abruptly Kanuth pulled off to the side of the road, said 'Karibu (welcome) to Ngorogoro' & invited us to get out & look.

The look we got was worth the price of admission; was worth the cost of the whole weekend safari. We looked over the edge of the steep hill we were on down into the crater. It is easy to find out that it is 20 km across more or less with a floor area of 240 sq. km. But it is another thing entirely to SEE that, all in one gaze, from the rim. You see it just as it is: the collapsed floor of a huge dead volcano. The floor is really quite flat. From the rim it looks dry & dusty, even barren, but with a few broad alkaline lakes & some small treed patches.

Then we began our descent into the crater itself. The 'descending road' is a series of steep switchbacks & with every switch you can see a bit more. From about halfway down, we could make out groups of tiny black dots: herds of moving animals. A little further down we could make out single-pixel red dots as well: Maasai herders in their bright shukas, following their cattle. Maasai are the only tribe allowed to live at one end of the crater because (being eaters almost exclusively of milk & beef) they are the only ones who could be trusted not to kill the wildlife.

Once on the floor we followed the rough dirt roads back & forth across the crater. After our wildlife-rich day yesterday, I really didn't expect to see anything new but we did anyway: we saw a number of new types of deer/antelopes, lots of ostriches, hyenas, jackals, an entire pride of lions (one of them was even sleeping on the road right in front of us, close enough to pat if we had been crazy). There were a few elephants hanging out in the treed area & a large family of hippos in the lake, putting on a show for us when we stopped for lunch. We stopped at one point in the midst of a 'mini-migration' of gnus & zebras, thousands of animals surrounding us, moving.

It was, as they say, spectacular, & I just find it so exciting to know that there are places like this in the world.

Tomorrow we must be up early; before 6 even, if we are to reach Dar es Salaam with a bit of a cushion of time before I catch my flight. So off to bed.

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