Published on Aug, 2024
I would wager that anyone who has been to Ngorongoro Crater will never forget their first view of it from the rim some 500 feet above: the dense green forests, the saline Lake Magadi coruscating in the sun at the heart of it, the myriad colours and contours of the crater’s walls and floor.
Inside the walls of this extinct volcano there are a staggering 25,000 mammals in an area roughly half the size of Cape Town. As you descend along the windy track from the top of the rim, tiny black dots will gradually become vast herds of buffalo, zebra and wildebeest stretching across the flat crater floor.
There’s probably nowhere in Africa you have a better chance of seeing the Big Five in a single game drive. At one point on our first drive inside the crater, there were three young male lions passing close to our car on one side, four big bull elephants on the other, two black rhino dead ahead and a spotted hyena behind. More than once inside the crater I didn’t know which way to look.