Ngorongo Crater and the Serengeti NP

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Left early for another trip in 4x4s to the Serengeti National Park and the Ngongoro Crater. Our guide Lawrence was a Rastafarian (later to be known as “Lawrence the Rastasafarian”) We visited the Ngongoro Crater Conservation Area. The area is known as the “Cradle of Mankind” because they found one of the oldest (could be the oldest) evidence of a human like specie from approx 3million years ago. The drive up was petrifying as the fog was super thick and the road was winding. We eventually made it in though and it was so worth it. It is like a natural enclosure for the animals. It is totally flat and the grass is really short so the animals don’t have anywhere to hide as such. The lake is full of flamingos. There was so many that when you go to climb up out of it you can the see the pink mass from very far away. We spent a few hours on a game drive and we saw our first cheetah. I have learnt quite a bit of Swahili particularly the names of animals (I actually feel like a real idiot, I didn’t know that half the names in The Lion King were in fact Swahili)

Simba - lion
Pumba - warthog
Karibu - welcome
Asante Sana - Thank You (You may remember asante sana squashed banana)
Jambo - hello
Rafiki - friend
Mzungu - white person (at least I know when someone is talking about me)

The weather was great and we saw a lot of animals but there is a really strict time to be out of the gate this led Lawrence to drive like a mad man. We have had really good luck so far with the local authorities, there are a million and one road blocks. They don’t seem to check anything in particular but we get stopped all the time.

We were camping the night on the rim. It was absolutely freezing. Freezing would be an understatement. We got a lecture about not leaving food in our tents because bush pigs will attack you in the middle of the night. OK! We made sure we didn’t have any food. We went for dinner in like a concrete shed where the power cut out about 8. We went to bed under one of the brightest moons I have ever seen, it was impossibly cold to even sit by the fire.

I woke up in the middle of the night to the snorts of pigs and the hooves of God knows what else. My heart was beating a million miles an hour as I went over in my head one last time that there was no food in the tent and then it dawned on me - there was a single Pringle in my pants (naturally Original flavour - the best flavour). I had picked it up off the floor in the 4 x 4 not wanting to eat it I put it in my pocket to be thrown out later. What had I done?! Was I about to Rachel and I killed! Curse that Pringle. Then I had other thoughts about my toiletries. Do bush pigs know that soap and shampoo are not food?As the scraping against the tent got more vigorous I started to get anxious. Should I wake Rach up so that we could stress together?

Let’s just say that night I made a lot of deals with God.


Pleased I survived the evening we woke for breakfast. Before we hit the game drive we visited the Olduvai Gorge. You can see recreations of the footprints they found and the history of the area. One of the things that struck me the most was the two archaeologists that discovered it dedicated their whole lives literally from their 20s until they died to researching and looking after it. I can’t imagine being that passionate about anything!

More game drive where we saw heaps of different animals and the drive from the Crater to the Serengeti plains was beautiful. Again camp was wild and we had been told there was a pride of lions walking around three nights before. Again I woke in the middle of night making several deals with God and Rachel woke up “Tash I just rolled on to something!” We were both too shit scared to open the tent to see what it was!

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Comments

[Matt]

Amature
Everyone knows bush pigs only eat sour cream and chive pringles... The ultimate pringle! sheeesh