Location: Ngorongoro Crater, Tanzania

Because we arrived in the camp after dark and in the pouring rain last night, I feel like we got our first real view of the area when we woke up at 5:30 AM for our first game drive of the day!

A massive expanse of plains stretched out in every direction as the sun rose over the acacia trees. Nobody slept super well as hyenas were snuffling around our tents in the middle of the night, and lions were huffing starting around 4 AM. We basically dropped strong coffee and anti-malaria pills down our throats and rushed to the trucks to catch sunrise. Right before leaving Mascha and I accidentally stood on an ant hill and ended up literally starting the day with ants in our pants, biting for the first couple of hours of the drive. So comfy. Love that for us. Even with the ants, we were seeing impalas, giraffes, heartbeasts and gazelles abound in the early morning light but then we started smelling something… rank.

The smell got really really strong when we came upon a fairly recent elephant corpse with a large pack of hyenas and a bunch of vultures scavenging what was left after the lions had finished with it. Despite an incredible amount of meat still there, the hyenas were yipping and fighting over scraps that had already been pulled off the body. Apparently they are good at cooperating but not at sharing! We all sniffed peppermint gum sticks in order to combat the smell and stay to watch more of the fighting. It was gruesome but we were entranced by it. The ciiiiircle of liiiiiife.

Yesterday we saw an area that could have contained hippos, but we didn’t have enough time to fully investigate so we headed over there this morning, and were rewarded with over 100 hippos snoozing in the river. ONE HUNDRED. They can only hold their breath for 5 or 6 minutes, so every so often a hippo would raise its head out of the water, huff, and sink back down against the other squishy bodies. Sometimes one would make a ‘wheeze honk’ sound and get a few others going in a cacophonous response. I had no idea they stayed in such large groups… which are delightfully known as ‘thunders’.

We came across Egyptian geese, slender mongooses (mongeese?) and secretary birds all in the same area until the radio lit up and Isaac rushed our vehicle towards a leopard sighting, which we had been hoping for all day.

We caught the tail end (literally) of a mother leopard jumping out of a tree and disappearing into the grass… only to then see her young son hauling an entire gazelle up into the tree. Our guide told us that he is a teenager and mom is likely trying to teach him a lesson about securing his kill. Twice we watched him drag the gazelle up into the tree, snack a little bit before accidentally dropping it, and then attempt to bring it back up. He was a little too far away for clear photos, and mom was hidden somewhere in grass, but getting to see this specific moment was incredibly lucky.

We saw a bunch more giraffes, a jackal and some zebras when we heard a call on the radio for a male lion, which we hadn’t seen yet. We all went pretty silent as we all waited with bated breath to see if we would find him. Here kitty kitty kitty!

It was my favourite sighting of the day because in his attempt to get us close, Isaac drove up right when the lion changed direction and we ended up less than 15 feet from each other and all I could think was ‘holy shit, should I close the window? Will that even help if he decides he wants in here?’ It was such an intense moment to have a lion look directly at me from that close, and Isaac stayed less than a minute before deciding we needed to be out of there.

It was probably for the best, not just safety wise but I was stunned. I needed time to process what is now burned into my eyeballs and my brain forever.

Well, I didn’t have any time for that processing because we came across a herd of 10 elephants within minutes. Animal after animal after animal. I could have cried again. I almost did but managed to keep it together. I had pretty high expectations coming into this trip and somehow I am still being blown away multiple times a day. Even Isaac kept saying how lucky we have been with the quality of our sightings!

By mid afternoon we needed to start making our way back towards the lip of the Ngorongoro crater, as that’s where camp was being set up for the night. I haven’t mentioned that Maasai people live in the national park so we’ve been seeing them all over, herding their animals and waving their wares at us as we pass by (honey seems to be a common one). I was really sad to be leaving the Serengeti so quickly, but also how much more could I ask for? We have seen 4 out of the big 5 animals in ways that are extremely rare. All that was left to see was a rhino, which we technically saw from a lookout point yesterday but it was so far away it was still a pin prick in the binoculars! I am going to say that counts though, if we don’t see another.

As we drove towards the crater we came across so many zebras and giraffes that I was wishing I had a fancy camera to document what we were seeing. So much of it didn’t feel real. How can it when a giraffe is eating so close to you that you can hear it chewing? We made it to camp and were rushed towards the showers before the masses arrived. There was still even a little bit of warm water left, which was a treat.

Warm is a bit of a generous word choice though. It was just above freezing, but I was still happy to get all the dust from the past two days off me and get into some fresh clothes. The camp sits at 2400 feet above sea level so we were certainly a bit chillier than we had been all day. We bundled up and waited in the dining area for a hot dinner while we shared stories of what we saw and what we loved most. This turned into dessert. Which turned into wine. Which turned into beer. Which turned into drinking games.

Being some of the older members of the group, Pauline and I didn’t have a whole lot of stamina for this so we put in a couple of hours and ended up in bed by 11PM. The night turned into the Swissters trying to teach me Swiss German which is hard even when you haven’t had 3 beers. Is 11 PM a respectable time to leave a party these days? Who knows, but sleep is a thing we have been in short supply of!

I’m in the tent now, and it’s chilly but nice for once to not be sweating my face off. Pauline is snoring lightly beside me and I can hear 2 other things:

1. The younger crowd cheering and still playing games in the dining hall.
2. An animal shuffling and chewing something. If I had to guess it would be a wildebeest or zebra based on what is common at this elevation…. But I am not going out to check!!

Nobody needs to deal with me running into a predator at 11:30 at night. Guess I will just fall asleep to whatever sound that is…

Sav