Day 2 – Driving to Ngorongoro Lodge in Tanzania

Jambo, it was a long and winding (and bumpy) road with lots of construction detours, 10 hours worth.  Traffic in Nairobi is worse than almost anywhere but lucky for us we were heading in the right direction out of town.  Ngorongoro Crater, being in Tanzania, meant that we had to first exit Kenya at their border station and then enter Tanzania at their border station.  We also switched drivers at that point.  Our driver in Tanzania is Hassan, very nice and knowledgeable but somewhat quiet.  Once you get into the Tanzanian countryside, you begin to see the Masai people who seem to enjoy just standing by the side of the road, well some of them anyway.  The others were herding goats & cattle, usually in the middle of the road, or carrying baskets or grain bags on their heads.  How in the heck can they balance them?  They are very colorful and photogenic; however, they hate to be photographed, much to Judy’s chagrin.   She did sneak a few photos and got yelled at once by a young boy.  We also almost ran into a guy herding 2 camels across the road.  We had lunch in Arusha at the Arusha Hotel and once we hit the highway after that, the animal fun began.  We saw an Ostrich, Impalas, 3 Giraffe’s, and once we hit the rim of the crater, we saw 3 Cape buffalo, and then about 20-30 Baboons at the entrance to the preserve.  The Baboons were very entertaining, with some engaging in risqué behavior.  We stopped at the overlook at Ngorongoro to photograph the floor of the crater.  Hassan pointed out a memorial to a 24 year old conservationist who died in a small airplane crash by flying into a vulture.  You can’t make this stuff up!  We were just about to drive off when I, with my eagle eye, spotted 4 elephants across the road.  The grass was a little high to get good photographs but they were quite close.  And all of this is before we’ve even ventured out on our first safari to the crater floor.  We’re now at the lodge, which is nice, but without heat or TV, gasp!  We can overlook the entire crater floor from 2,000 feet above at the lodge and were able to pick out herds of Wildebeest and Elephants with binoculars.  Not a bad view!  Grandpa Mormino would have been saying, “Wheresa my gun?”  Okay, enough.  Kwa Heri (That means good-bye for those of you who aren’t fluent in Swahili like me.)

Boy yelling at Judy for taking his photo

Camels in the road!

Nasty Baboons!