Thank you for an amazing safari. Our guide Patrick was the best. His extensive knowledge of flora and fauna was amazing. He has a great sense of humor; he is warm, patient and professional. Patrick not ...
Constantine and Luis Regalado Physician Wellington, FL
About two-and-a-half million years ago, the Ngorongoro volcano bulged with molten lava, which rose to form a great igneous dome. Gradually the lava beneath the dome flowed elsewhere and the dome above collapsed. What remains of that cataclysm is the Ngorongoro Crater, the largest unbroken caldera in the world. The rocky rim of the crater rises 600-750 meters (1,900-2,500 feet) above the crater floor, enclosing an area of 264 sq km (164 sq mi). Some 30,000 large mammals live on the crater floor, primarily zebras and wildebeest, many living out their lives within the walls of the caldera's rim.
The focus of the conservation area is, naturally, upon the great crater itself and the abundance of East African wildlife found within its arena, but the sanctuary also encompasses grasslands, mountains, forests, rivers, swamps, and shimmering alkaline lakes found beyond the crater wall. The Oldupai Gorge (formerly Olduvai), where paleontologists have discovered the remains of humankind's earliest ancestors, lies within the conservation area, as do the Crater Highlands, a collection of volcanoes, craters, and calderas that rise from the western wall of the Great Rift Valley. The geologic forces that created the rift set the stage for the region's volcanic activity. Those forces are still at work and the volcano known as Oldoinyo Lengai (“Mountain of God” to the Maasai) is still active, last erupting in 1983.
The Ngorongoro Conservation Area covers an astonishing 8,280 square kilometers (5,144 square miles). Its western border joins the Serengeti National Park, and to the east is the Lake Manyara Reserve. Lodging at the Ngorongoro Crater is on the rim; visitors aren't permitted on the crater floor overnight and all vehicles on the floor must return to the rim by 6:00 pm every evening.
Wildlife
Beyond the Big Five (buffalo, elephant, lion, leopard, and rhino), all of which lucky visitors might spot in a single morning, the crater also hosts up to 30,000 large mammals. Most are grazers, zebras and wildebeest accounting for about half this number, and among the remainder are gazelles, buffaloes, elands, hartebeest, and warthogs. The high concentration of herbivores has led to an extraordinarily dense population of predators. Lions and hyenas are well represented, but cheetahs, jackals, leopards, and even the housecat-sized serval hunt within the crater, too.
Tanzania's last remaining black rhinos roam the crater floor and hippos laze half-submerged in the murky waters of a swamp in the center of the crater floor. Bull elephants, their great tusks swooping before them, roam the floor (the crater doesn't offer sufficient food to support breeding herds), but a number of familiar East African species are absent, including the giraffe, topi, and impala. These species are likely to be spotted elsewhere in the conservation area, as are pink flamingos at the nearby Lake Magadi, one of a number of mineral-laden, alkali lakes in the region.
