19/03/16, Safari, Ngorongoro to Arusha

Third and final day of our 3 day safari. We had a buffalo walking through camp al night 🙂 Nevertheless we broke up camp early this morning and after sunrise we made our way into the Ngorongoro crater. Main aim of today was to see some more cats (any cats), flamingos and rhinos!

The crater is just beautifull! And it really feels like a lost world! The main reason that both the crater and the Serengeti are still relatively unspoiled is because the area was originally inhabited by Masai. These Masai were fierce warriors, which prevented that they got themselves colonized in the 19th century and which kept the Europeans away from the wildlife. As violent as they were, the Masai stayed away from the wildlife themselves as well and solely relied on their cattle for survival. Throughout history animal populations have fluctuated due to drought and epidemics, but nowadays the Sergenti and Ngorongoro crater house a very healthy self sustaining eco system. The Ngorongoro conservation area and Serengeti national park are respectively 8250km2 and 14750km2 in size (23000km2 combined). In comparison, the Netherlands (the country, not the kingdom) consists of 41500km2. So the animals are not just living in some fenced off area, they truly roam free in a little country of their own. The crater has a surface of 260km2, which is 2,5 times the size of The Hague.

We had another great day today. We saw more lions, we saw some other wild cat of which I can’t remember the name, we found our flamingos, and – most importantly – we found rhinos (although they were pretty far away)! And of course we saw many more animals… We completed the big five; Elephant, Lion, Buffalo, Leopard and Rhino; called the big 5 because they are the five animals that are hardest to hunt while on foot (bad reason to call something big though).

At 11am it was time for us to leave the crater and to make our way back to Arusha, where we arrived at 4pm. I took a much needed shower (i didn’t have a shower in 6 days, which even for TDA standards is pretty bad) and now I’m slowly preparing to get to bed. We had an amazing 3 days and I am lucky that I got to see all this. And the adventure isn’t over yet! Tomorrow we ride again…