Ngorongoro

August 2, 2023

I spend a weird amount of time thinking about evolution so going to the Olduvai Gorge where the Leakey’s found the earliest evidence of the existence of human ancestors. Growing up with National Geographic magazine documenting all that was being discovered there, Olduvai Gorge was mythical and mysterious and it did not disappoint me in real life. The museum was well done and I loved bathing in the history.

After descending into the Ngorongoro crater, we saw walking/hunting lion, acres of wildebeest, serval cat, secretary bird, zebra, cape buffalo, flamingo, hippo, yellow beaked pelican, hyena, mongoose, and warthog. At a watering hole, we saw hippo with 5 birds hanging out with it: crane, storke, avocet, flamingo, crested crane.

At lunch, we stopped with the 1000 other tour groups at the edge of this water inlet. There were hippos handing out in the water near the edge and because there were many people wandering near them, I falsely thought it was safe to do the same. But when I was snapping pix of them, I noticed that one seemed to be looking intently at me. I noticed that maybe I shouldn’t be so close and as I started to move away, the hippo followed me in the water. Yikes! I moved quickly back to the vehicle.

The Ngorongoro highlight was following a trio of lionesses on the move to hunt buffalo. They were not concerned about vehicles so they walked right up to and alongside the land rover. The leader peed on the tires just to show who owned us. Her followers had to walk up and sniff her markings. I was standing, wedged out the sun roof and the lions were literally at the base of the truck so I was 6 feet vertical of this wild animal.