The Ngorongoro Conservation Area is a UNESCO World Heritage Site located 110 miles west of Arusha. The area is named after the Ngorongoro Crater, the world’s largest inactive, intact and unfilled volcanic caldera. The crater, which formed when a large volcano exploded and collapsed on itself two to three million years ago, is 610 meters (2,000 feet) deep and its floor covers 100 square miles. Estimates of the height of the original volcano range from 4,500 to 5,800 meters (14,800 to 19,000 feet) high. The western portion of the park abuts the Serengeti National Park (also a UNESCO World Heritage Site). The conservation area also contains Olduvai Gorge, one of the most important paleoanthropological sites in the world.
The area comprising Ngorongoro and Serengeti combined with Kenya’s Maasai Mara game reserve is home to the Great Migration, a massive annual migration of millions of wildebeest, zebras, gazelles, and other animals. Each year around the same time in January, a zebra and wildebeest migration begins in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area and loops clockwise through the Serengeti National Park and north towards the Masai Mara reserve in Kenya. This migration is naturally caused by the availability of grazing. The initial phase lasts from about January to March, when the calving season begins. Approximately 260,000 zebras precede 1.7 million wildebeest and hundreds of thousands of other plains game, including around 470,000 gazelles. During February, the wildebeest are grazing and giving birth to approximately 500,000 calves in 2 to 3 weeks. As the rains end in May, the animals start moving northwest eventually crossing some major rivers beginning in July. These are a popular safari attraction because crocodiles are lying in wait in the rivers. The herds arrive in Kenya in late July/August, where they stay for the rest of the dry season. In early November, with the start of the short rains, the migration starts moving south again, to the short grass plains of the southeast, usually arriving in December in plenty of time for calving in February. About 250,000 wildebeest die during the journey from Tanzania to the Maasai Mara National Reserve in southwestern Kenya, a total of 800 kilometers (500 mi). Death is usually from thirst, hunger, exhaustion, or predation by big cats.
Ngorongoro Crater is known for containing the “Big Five” game animals. This term was coined by hunters and refers to the five most difficult animals in Africa to hunt on foot. The animals consist of the lion, African elephant, Cape buffalo, leopard and rhinoceros. Believe it or not, there is also a “Ugly Five” African safari animals that consists of the hyena, wildebeest, vulture, warthog and marabou stork (we came up with a few more of our own throughout our trip including the “Cute Five” and the “Small Five.”). When we headed on to Ngorongoro Crater we were instructed to keep all of the windows up as we approached the entry gate as there are food-aggressive baboons that lurk about. We went to the washroom (as they call it here), wandered through the small museum that provides a map and information about the conservation area and headed back to the car. We found a very large baboon sitting on top of our car. Salim said it wouldn’t mind us taking a photo, but I was not convinced. Trey stood nearish to get a photo, but before we could take it, the baboon climbed down right behind him and ran past to get into what was maybe a trash truck. I thought he was going after Trey for a second, but fortunately that was not the case. We climbed in, Trey rolled down his window and we pulled up to the gate to hand in our ticket. You know what happens next, right? All of a sudden a baboon is on the window, basically sitting on Trey’s lap. Everyone in the car is shouting. The baboon reaches behind Trey’s seat and grabs an almost full red box of cookies called “Eet-Sum-Mor” out of the seat pocket in front of Sy. It darts back out of the car and runs into the woods. More shouting ensues, mostly at Trey for prematurely opening the window (but to be fair I had my window down also on the opposite side of the car) and then laughing once we realized everyone was okay and there was not a baboon in our car anymore! Conclusion provided by Salim and Becky: the baboon saw the tell-tale red box of cookies through the window and targeted the white tourist’s window and took advantage of our inexperience. The baboons know the guides and won’t try to steal from their window.
We drove on and stopped at a scenic overlook of the Ngorongoro crater. Impressive! Salim told us how it was formed by the movement of tectonic plates and a series of volcanoes and a giant eruption that threw ash miles away. Sy was very interested in how the volcano forms the caldera that is now the crater. We checked into the Ngorongoro Serena Safari Lodge and went for a drink at the bar, had some great popcorn and watched a music and acrobatic show. The men were very talented and we were all entertained.
We got up for a 630 AM departure and watched the sunrise over the crater during breakfast. Gorgeous! With the early departures, it does get cool and our lovely guides provide us with a hot water bottle and fleece blanket to wrap up in until the sun warms us. We rode down into the crater and saw a ton of animals…multiple groups of lion, wildebeest, zebra, jackal, ostrich, warthog, impala, elephant, Cape buffalo, eland, a plethora of birds (whose names escape me, but Becky knows), flamingo, hippo, and rhinoceros. Surprisingly, the only animal that you can’t find in the crater is giraffe. They are too tall to make it down the crater wall. We stopped for a quick bathroom break and an ice cream at hippo lake. There were at least 8 floating in the water with their eyes just peaking out.
We arrived back around 1230 PM and tried to have a nap after Griffin had an epic tired-meltdown. No luck so we powered through some school work, played mindlessly on the iPads and went for an early Shirley Temple, more great popcorn and a grilled cheese and French fries at the bar. We skipped the official dinner and sent the kids to bed super early. We have been on the go and they are tired from all the excitement.
The following morning we visited a Maasai homestead, known as a boma, and participated in some dancing, singing and jumping competitions. We saw the very small interior of their identical houses and visited their school for ages 3-5 years old. A very precocious girl came up to the front of the classroom and lead the class in reciting the English alphabet and numbers. It was quite impressive! After completing that school, they attend a larger local school. Trey did a jumping competition with the Maasai men and lost embarrassingly. Thankfully no video of this exists so it didn’t happen.
We then went to Olduvai Gorge, a steep-sided ravine in the Great Rift Valley that stretches across East Africa and is about 30 miles long. The many sites exposed by the gorge have proven invaluable in furthering understanding of early human evolution. The British/Kenyan paleoanthropologist-archeologist team of Mary and Louis Leakey established excavation and research programs at Olduvai Gorge that achieved great advances in human knowledge and are world-renowned. The gorge takes its name from the Maasai word oldupai which means “the place of the wild sisal”. Olduvai became the name after a bad game of whisper down the lane.
Homo habilis, probably the first early human species, occupied Olduvai Gorge approximately 1.9 million years ago (mya). Then came a contemporary australopithecine, Paranthropus boisei, 1.8 mya, followed by Homo erectus, 1.2 mya. Our species, Homo sapiens, which is estimated to have emerged roughly 300,000 years ago, is thought to have occupied sites in the gorge by 17,000 years ago. We got a short presentation about the various fossils that were found in Olduvai and there was an excellent museum at the site that surprisingly kept the boy’s attention. It was a little difficult trying to explain evolution to 6- and 8-year olds.
We next traveled on to the Ntudu Region. This area forms part of the northern section of Ngorongoro Conservation Area and stretches to the Serengeti National Park. It is well known as a place to see the start of the Great Migration, where wildebeest calving takes place from January to March. It is also one of the only areas in Tanzania where it is legal to drive off-road. In Ntudu we saw a ton of animals including some new ones, specifically the big cats. We saw a lot of lions laying in the low brush bushes in the shade. There are groups of males together and some families with a few females with cubs and one male nearby. They are just as majestic as you would expect. I didn’t realize how close you can get on a safari to the big predators. The jeeps drive up within about 20 feet and we are closely instructed to stay quiet and still so they do not mistake us for prey.
On our drive in we saw a herd of wildebeest migrating across the road and later saw them paused by the side of a lake. We also saw a leopard. After a bit of patient waiting, it emerged from the bushes where it had been resting and walked up the hill and into some other bushes. We saw a full giraffe skeleton. We saw our first hyenas and had some great sunsets. We continued to see dik-diks, the smallest of the antelopes, multiple times a day. When at the hotels we have been swimming laps and doing Peloton workouts when the internet is available. We did a poolside workout overlooking the river.
We watched a female cheetah eating a baby wildebeest. She gnawed on it and pulled it to shreds for a while until she saw a few hyenas closing in and several vultures circling overhead. She would eat a few bites and then pick her head up quickly to look around for hyenas. There were about 8 safari vehicles in a semi- circle around the cheetah and we were told that we gave her a longer meal than she might have gotten otherwise because the hyenas and vultures gather in numbers and chase her off and steal the food. We had breakfast in the bush only a few hundred meters from her kill.
The following day Griffin got to drive the safari jeep. He was so proud. Salim was great with the children. He gave each of them a chance at the wheel. They were thrilled to navigate the narrow dirt roads and bumps. Marin drove it herself including the pedals (with clutch/shift assistance) and did a great job at around 30 mph. Some of the final highlights of the Ndutu game drives were the giraffes and alone time with some lions.
On our game drive, we saw a sad sight. We thought that we were looking at multiple hippos swimming in Lake Masek, but it turns out that there were about 150 dead wildebeest floating in the lake. Salim says that the lake was deeper than they are used to and they likely drowned while trying to cross. Where the leader goes, the herd follows so they all just kept going until they drowned. We sat watching them float in the water for a few minutes, feeling sad for them.
We had some fun at the lodge and then went back the next morning to see what had become of the dead wildebeest. We saw hundreds of vultures flying in circles overhead, perched 20 in a tree, fighting over a carcass on shore, and sitting on the ground in groups having eaten or waiting to eat. Salim thought that hyena dragged the carcass out of the water and the birds took over. The lappet-faced vulture is required to “open” the carcass as it has a beak suited for this. They are the most powerful and aggressive of the African vultures and are able to tear through the tough hides and knotty muscles of large mammals that the others cannot penetrate, The brown ones and white and grey ones followed up on the feast. There was also a Marabou stork on scene as well. They are the only scavenger from the stork family and are sometimes called the “undertaker bird” due to their shape from behind: cloak-like wings and back, skinny white legs, and sometimes a large white mass of “hair”.
We drove on to Serengeti National Park and did a short hike to a viewpoint above the gate area where the paperwork is processed for the vehicles to enter. We saw some red-headed, purple-bodied lizards who were in full mating plume called agama. After entering through the gate, we were immediately struck by the immense landscape with wide open spaces as far as the eye could see broken up by rocky outcroppings known as kopje where predators like to hang out. The name Serengeti comes from the Maasai language meaning “endless plains.” There were thousands upon thousands of zebra interspersed with a few wildebeest here and there. Apparently the zebra migrate first and eat the taller grasses allowing the wildebeest to follow and eat the shorter grasses. We sped through the grasslands over bumpy dirt tracks and slower over the even bumpier dirt tracks stopping now and then to observe the animals we sighted. A highlight of the day was the tree with 5 lions sleeping in it, draped over branches with their four limbs hanging down on either side. We had a delicious late lunch at the Serengeti Visitor’s Center in Seronera where there was a cool, informative self-guided walking trail underneath a huge rock that looked like Pride Rock from the The Lion King. We then headed to our last safari accommodation, the Kubu Kubu Tented Lodge. The view here is spectacular with 180 degrees of Serengeti plains from our rooms, the lodge and the pool.
We went out early on our last morning to see the hippo pools which did not disappoint! There were hundreds of hippopotamus of all sizes in the water here. The viewing area was at a bend in a brown, muddy river with several nearby baboons and two 3-foot crocodiles on the rocks just on the other bank. The water as far as you could see was FULL of hippos making their deep grunting noises. These are the males talking to each other to say “stay out of my water”. Each family of females and babies keeps to its own water “area” which is marked by the male defecating in the water. The teenage hippos were playing, splashing and opening their mouths in mock battle. We could have pulled up a chair and watched all day! They were very entertaining.
We examined a termite mound up close. The active ones look wet and dark around the top as the termites mix their own spit with mud and pile the mound up higher and higher as a cooling mechanism. Only 30% is above the ground and 70% is below the ground. The queen lays 10k eggs per day and there are several different kinds of workers. There are aardvarks that eat the termites, but they don’t seem to be too common. They are probably one of the only animals that we didn’t see. It was a very thorough safari trip. The kids posed with a Cape buffalo skull. They seemed to be everywhere and are quite striking because the horns almost always have some odd fungus growing on them.
Our last afternoon here we spent doing some schoolwork, swimming in the pool and working out at the gym. The kids were thrilled to run on the treadmill and use the elliptical, weights and bike. We had a fantastic dinner with Becky and Salim in the lodge. As with all the “in-park” accommodations, you need an escort to walk you back to your room after dark. We started walking and Marin asked, “do you ever see any animals out here at this time?” Our Masai escort, immediately turned on his flashlight and on the other side of the row of tents, there were at least 7 hyenas loping by…maybe 25 feet from us! He shined the light in the other direction and there was a huge herd of impala standing on the hill…also about 25 feet from us! We tightened up our line and walked a little closer to the escort, a Maasai man carrying a spear. Marin kept saying, “holy crap!” We ran into our tent and yelled, “Thank you so much!” over our shoulders!
Some final observations and tips about Tanzania: 1) The nationals parks are huge and awesome. Tanzania has done an admirable job preserving the habitat and migration routes for the animals. It helps that Serengeti and Ngorongoro are world heritage sites. 2) The parks really don’t smell like you would think they might smell. Even with thousands of animals defecating and urinating, dead animals, scavengers, rivers, lakes, standing marshes, and birds, there really isn’t a bad odor. The wind helps and the system is so balanced that the dead things are eaten and removed quickly so there is little long term decay. Per Becky, the one place that can smell if the water isn’t running well is the hippo pool. 3) Tanzanians take pride in their unique parks and are happy when we get to appreciate it. The staff at Off the Beaten Path Safaris and in the lodges have been lovely, friendly, helpful and the food has been great with options for kids like chicken, rice and salad with almost every meal. 4) Tanzanian’s make great soup. Don’t skip the soup! Across the board it has been really good and rarely has any dairy in it. We have had pumpkin, spinach, potato leek and celery. 5) All the hotels we stayed at had a group tip box in the lobby so you could just leave a lump sum at check out so you don’t have to worry about tipping along the way. It is much more relaxing this way. 6) We were here for 15 days and were able to do a lot of game drives in the different parks as well as visit several towns, a school and cultural sites like the 3 tribes we met. It gave us a really well rounded experience. 7) Listen to your travel medicine doctor and bring Azithromycin or something for traveler’s diarrhea. Everyone has taken it at some point since leaving home in December. I would also recommend the malaria prophylaxis Malarone, having a stock of Zofran ODTs, Ciprofloxacin, and Augmentin. 8) Masks are not often seen here. Everything is outside and the Covid rates are quite low. We got used to not wearing masks and will have to re-train when we leave Africa.
Animals we have seen here in no particular order: black rhinoceros, crocodile, dik-dik, mongoose, blue-balled vervet monkey, African elephant, impala, waterbuck, ostrich, grey crowned crane, tawny eagle, cattle egret, hamerkop, Goliath heron, yellow-billed stork, pelican, hornbill, spoonbill, cormorant, vulture (3 kinds), secretarybird, lilac-breasted roller (probably the prettiest bird in Tanzania), little bee-eater, superb starling, grey-headed kingfisher, helmeted guineafowl (Marin thought that these looked like a combination of quails and chickens so she called them quickens the entire trip), red bishop, weaverbird, pelican, kori bustard, oxpecker, marabou stork, various ducks, warthog, plains zebra, baboon, blue monkey, Cape buffalo, lion, cheetah and cubs, hyena, hippo, leopard, hyrax, agama lizard, eland, Thomson’s gazelle, Grant’s gazelle, giraffe, wildebeest, monitor lizard, topi, leopard tortoise, gecko, bats, termites, scorpions, and many more birds that I can’t name. Antelope is a term used to describe any deer-like animal, and includes things like impalas, gazelles, springboks, elands, kudus and many more. There are over 70 antelope species in Africa and 16 live in the Serengeti alone. Unlike deer which shed their horns every year, antelopes keep them all the time. Of all of the big animals, I would say that the rhino was the most elusive. We only saw it from afar, once or twice. We did not see any of the smaller cats like the serval or caracal.
We are so glad we had this time here with Becky and Salim! We highly recommend a trip here. Contact us if you are considering going. Off the Beaten Path Safaris is a great company. They are very honest and eager to work with you to give you the experience that you are looking for, whether camping or luxury style!
On to Zanzibar for a few days of exploring, rest and relaxation. We flew to Zanzibar from the Seronera Airstrip making a few stops in this! The fun never ends.
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