The Ngorongoro Crater

If you took that last picture on the previous page and turned around, this is roughly what you would see. The crater was formed by a huge volcanic mountain which imploded upon itself leaving the rim intact. The walls of the rim are about 2000 feet higher that the floor of the crater. That lake is loaded with minerals since the lake has no outlet. Most resident animals stay in the crater since the rim is very steep. Of the big five hard-to-see animals; male lion, leopard, cheetah, rhino and hippo; we had yet to see the male lion and rhino. So Katau was instructed to be especially on the lookout for these two.
On the way down, we came across this Euphorbia Brussei.
These are the blossoms up close. This is a close relative of the candelabra tree that we showed you in Amboseli.
On the crater floor, were able to get real close to zebras.
Elaine couldn't resist getting a close-up of a bar code.
This brown furry zebra is newly born.
as you can see in the picture above.
A nice assembly of birds.
Yellow billed egret and some sort of goose. Ideas?.

 

This is a yellow fever tree. The tree evidently develops all those bumps to protect it from being totally destroyed by elephants, which rub against it and actually eats and digests the bark.
We also saw flocks of brilliantly pink flamingos.
This demonstrates how it scoops water into his bill.
Away from the water, a lovely Grey Crowned Crane.
A great example of a secretary bird. Her crest looks like fountain pens stuck in her ear and when she walks, she stomps like a secretary typing. This is clearly seen on the video.
This is a left handed elephant. The left tusk broke because he overused it digging. Hope he can adjust.
These are live sacred ibis on a dead tree branch.
A great white pelican and its reflected image.
And a pelican is just joining its friends in a tree.
Way in the distance at 11:15 A.M., Katau identified a brown speck to be a rhino. Elaine took this nice picture.
He obliged by walking slowly right toward us.
At this moment, the beast seemed to startle!
But, he showed great restraint and didn't charge our van.
At about noon, we investigated a hippo pool. The one above was evidently yawning.
But shortly afterwards, these two were fighting furiously, throwing up mud and water. It's great on the video.
At about one o'clock, we had a nice packed lunch.
Afterwards, we saw the male ostrich above, . . .
. . . and his female ostrich mate nearby.
This is a huge crowd of young ostriches, male and female.
But, we still had not seen a male lion. The splendid one to the left was finally spotted by Katau at about 2.10 P.M. and we were really overjoyed. We had to wait a pretty long time before he raised his head and opened his mouth, but we weren't going to give up early this time. Both vans were here to see this.

With this accomplished, we decided to quit for the day. But on the way back, we saw some photogenic wildebeest.
Back at the lodge, we met with Liz and Bob, two members of our church choir who were on another safari and just happened to stay at the same lodge these two nights.

That's about it for wild game viewing. We have a few more stops to make and will probably cover them all in the final page of this Africa site. It contains pictures of Giraffe Park, a curious place where giraffes come and literally eat out of your hand. We also visited the farm that Karen Blixon describes in Out Of Africa. So, join us for our
WRAP UP.

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