Ngorongoro
Unique is a thoroughly overused word, but it really does apply to the Ngorongoro Crater. This is the largest unbroken caldera in the world - and it's full of big wild animals. The difficulty here is remembering that what you're looking at isn't artificial. And this becomes harder when you realise the only thing to rival the animal population in Ngorongoro is the tourist population...and for this you must be prepared. Read more?
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On a bad day at Ngorongoro you can find yourself pursued by minibuses full of camera-toting tourists each time you stop. It's probably harsh to suggest that you should miss the Crater out altogether on account of the traffic jams, but our advice would be plan to leave wishing you'd stayed longer, rather than the other way round. Amazing it is, remote it isn't.
Tourists or no tourists the Crater itself is one of those sights you really have to see to believe; formed with the collapse of a massive volcano (quite possibly rivalling Kilimanjaro in height) it's been preserved as a perfect bowl some 18 km across, a third of a mile deep and of a scale and perfection that really is staggering. The ground area is just over 260 square kilometres and within this relatively small space most of the major east African habitats and mammal species are represented. What's more you have an incredibly good chance of seeing them here on your safari.
Once on the Crater floor, most of the animals at Ngorongoro, whilst totally wild, are very used to vehicles. This means that they all but ignore them (which at times must be very hard to do) and as a result they can be approached fairly easily. This makes the Ngorongoro Crater an ideal stop on any safari and an excellent place to take children as intervals between animals are generally short and the game is often close enough that you won't need to look with binoculars (don't leave them behind though).
It used to be that an early morning start, to be one of the first vehicles into the Crater, would ensure that you had a few hours of relative peace and quiet and normally be the first to stumble across any night time kills or the shyer predators still heading for home before the curtain goes up on a new day with its new audience. This is nowadays less easy to predict which makes the expertise and frame of mind of your guide more important than ever.
If you're looking for a way of visiting the Crater, but avoiding the large lodges on the Crater Rim, then the Karatu area, a short distance to the east is worth looking at, as are some of the crop of new seasonal camps, as you'd expect much more of an exclusive tented experience but generally set a little way from the rim itself.
The vast majority of visitors to Ngorongoro simply 'do the Crater' and then head on, normally up the main Serengeti drag towards the central areas around Seronera. Which is perfect - because the Crater forms just 3% of the Ngorongoro Conservation area and the rest of it encompasses more fabulous landscape and wilderness, some of which genuinely rivals the Crater itself in terms of experience and wow value, but with very few visitors.
The hills, ridges and forests of the Highlands make for excellent walking country, best explored over several days with an ultra light camp transported by Maasai pack donkeys. There are numerous routes but a rewarding one takes you from the Crater rim to Empakkaai, with its own luminescent crater lake (quite small but this one some 80 metres in depth) and then down part of the Rift Valley wall past Oldonyo Lengai to Lake Natron. Or perhaps scaling Makurut mountain before dropping down onto the southern Serengeti plains and following the riverlines to Olduvai Gorge, even as far up as the Ndutu woodlands.
Probably our favourite area of all is the Gol Mountains, a surprisingly rarely visited gem of an area with rocky mountain ridges, wide sweeping valleys and very dramatic gorges. Gol is a properly harsh area through much of the year but for 3 months or so during the rains transforms into a veritable paradise in almost every respect. This is hardly surprising given the quality of the 'neighbourhood'. With the Crater Highlands directly south, the Rift Valley plunging down to Lake Natron to the East, the maasai concession areas of Loliondo to the north and the Serengeti short grass plains to the west, you might struggle to hold your own but Gol, when conditions are right, does it in spadefuls.
More articles that you might find helpful
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Mobile Tented Safaris
Northern Tanzania - Serengeti and the rest
Do I want a private vehicle and guide?
Kenya
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