"Africa: Ngorongoro "
I woke up the morning following my now famous elephant race feeling miserable. I had hardly any sleep that night. Some large and unknown beast decided to spend the midnight hours sniffing and scratching around our tent. I'm not sure what it was, I'm told either a hyena, porcupine or warthog, but it's tough to get relaxed when you hear heavy breathing only inches from your head.
When sharing a tent with a beautiful woman, this would usually be considered a good thing, but the panting wasn't coming from Meredith. She appeared sound asleep, seemingly unaware of our mystery visitor.
Regardless, when I woke, I was tired, my stomach was aching, and I had hardly any appetite. Really, all I wanted to do was curl up in the tent. But we still had Ngorongoro to see. And no African safari is complete without a trip to the crater. We bundled up (it's cold on the crater rim) and drove down the tight switchbacks to the crater floor.
Ngorongoro is a 100 square mile volcanic crater, about 1800 feet deep. The crater rim is lush, green, and regularly shrouded in mist, constantly chilly from the elevation. The floor, however, has evolved into a miniature, encapsulated Serengeti, a totally isolated and fully evolved ecosystem complete with pristine salt lakes filled with pink flamingos, massive herds of buffalo, wildebeest, zebra, and prides of lion stalking in the grass. All the animals you would expect to find on the plain, only in a hole, twelve miles across and high on a mountain.
It's fairly extraordinary, the wildlife unbelievable, and unbelievably close. Wildebeest so close I could reach out and touch them and vevet monkeys that would hop right up onto the hood of the car.
Occasionally it's even X-rated.
Ever seen a hippo get busy? Meredith and I were lucky enough to get front row seats to some hard core hippo action. We watched a pair of those hot and horny hippos mating in the shallow water, and it didn't even require an Internet connection or an AdultCheck license.
Oddly enough, this two-ton coupling wasn't the earth shaking experience one might expect.
But talk about the cycle of life! While these hefty young lovers were ensuring the survival of their species, about fifty yards away a pride of lions were tearing into the bloated stomach of a buffalo, taken down while trapped in the mud.
It was all very voyeuristic. I felt so dirty. Well, not really.
Actually, I still felt miserable, but the breathtaking Ngorongoro kept me from dwelling on my rapidly deteriorating health.
The crater is incredible. Because of its small size and incredible isolation, it feels positively prehistoric. Had a brontosaurus lumbered out in front of the truck, I would hardly have been surprised. It feels like Land of the Lost - I half expected to see Sleestaks walking around the crater rather than the Maasai.
Unfortunately, the biggest problem for the crater are the massive migrating herds of Land Rover that cross the crater floor and gather in groups of ten or more at every interesting event and every sleeping predator. The constantly gawking tourists in tacky safari hats, the smell of unregulated exhaust, and the SUV parking lots around every lion remove some of the mystery and wonder that characterizes the Ngorongoro experience.
Regardless, the mist, the animals, their amazing proximity, Ngorongoro is a safari I won't soon forget.
The highlight of Ngorongoro was our first and only sighting of rhino. Rhino are terribly threatened in Africa. Less than 20,000 exist in the wild, and I'm told none remain in the Serengeti due to the poachers. Thankfully, a few remain in the crater and each is assigned their own park ranger for protection. They are watched constantly from four towers on the crater rim, and are counted daily. Poachers, should they sneak into the park, are shot on sight.
We drove all day searching for an elusive rhino. They spend most of the day alone, lying in the high grass. But in the evening they make their way to the forests on the edge of the crater floor. It was in the late evening when we first spotted them, a mother and her calf, maybe fifty yards to our left. We stopped the truck, and I climbed out onto the roof to take pictures.
It was a remarkable experience. She was huge with two incredible horns. We sat and watched them trudge quietly by. I suddenly forgot all about my upset stomach and throbbing head. I forgot all about my world and life in America. I felt I had stepped out of time. I was in Africa, and I was perched on top of a Land Rover watching a wild rhinoceros leading her calf through a herd of wildebeest. I didn't know when or if I would ever see this again, and I felt honored to have been there to see her in her magnificent home.
