Ngongoro Highlands

Tuesday, 18^th January

Rhino Lodge on the Ngorongoro Crater rim

We are drinking afternoon tea on the rustic balcony of the very basic Rhino Lodge as I write this journal and Helmut identifies birds in his bird book.  It’s cool and cloudy up here on the rim of Ngorongoro crater.  I think I’ll be wearing my jeans and a sweater this evening.  There is no view of the crater from here as we are situated on the wrong side of the road for that, but there is no fence or manicured lawn between us and the highland forest.  The place is clean and the facilities adequate, though more like a hostel with private rooms than a lodge.  This is the real thing – a local community (Masai) project, though now bought out by an Italian.  It’s clear that they have taken great pains to make it nice for the ‘wasungu’ – definitely Masai in taste and colour scheme, but with quite a different result from that produced by a white manager trying to give the décor an ethnic look!  We haven’t seen very much wildlife yet, but there is a waterbuck grazing near our veranda and lots of evidence of buffalo as well as footprints on the other side of the building in the flower bed by the door to our room.  Bright yellow weaver birds are busy in the small bushes a few feet away and mozzies are nibbling at my ankles already, yet there are no mosquito nets over the beds or screens on the windows.  Mmmm.  We are told the generator will be on from 6 – 9 p.m. and after that there is a candle and our flashlight to light us to bed.  Just like the old days!

The drive here from Karatu was uneventful, the road is smoothly paved and painted with white and yellow lines, and we still haven’t spied a single giraffe, zebra or gazelle!  The murram road began at the conservation area gate, where we paid a lot of US dollars in cash for two days, one at Ngorongoro and tomorrow at Ndutu, as well as even more to go down into the crater tomorrow morning. The views as we drove up the very steep, winding but perfectly graded road to the rim of the crater from the conservation area gate were as spectacular as they always were and the forest unchanged.  As we neared the crater rim they became festooned with Spanish moss.  Finally, on the crater rim we got a view down into the crater  and also saw some wildlife – a troupe of baboons, a mongoose and two big elephants as well as a couple of different varieties of eagles and some maribou storks, the latter as ugly as we remembered.

The steep winding road up the side of Ngorongoro

Spanish Moss

At troupe of baboons on the road

Tomorrow we’ll be up before dawn in order to breakfast at six and go down into the crater at 7 as soon as it opens.  Shouldn’t be too difficult if we have to go to bed at 9 this evening!