Woke up at 5:30 am this morning in preparation for our trip to Ngorongoro Conservation Area. Stepping outside my banda the sky was still dark and the moon and one star were very bright. Quickly packing a lunch and grabbing some breakfast I strolled outside to the fire pit to watch the sun rise. So the sun is coming up and I happen to look down into the pit and see something small running around. My first thought was that it was a rat but watching it some more proved this impossible. There was no tail and it moved differently than a rat. It also stopped every so often and curled up in a tight ball trying to hide. As I stand there watching this creature the sun comes up and I see that it is a little hedgehog. Two other girls have joined me by now and one of them easily scoops the hedgehog up and we deposit it next to the garden hedge. It was an interesting twist on the early start I had expected.
The park entrance is about half an hour from camp and we made it to the very top of the crater by half past eight. We heard a short lecture from the tourism officer and had the opportunity to ask questions. In his speech, the tourism officer had mentioned that Bushmen live on the southern border of the park. This was really exciting to me since I have been fascinated with them and their culture since high school. Our student mentor said that we might get the chance to visit them on a non-program day but warned that they are very far away.
Lecture over we eagerly loaded up and headed into the crater. The road down was narrow (for one lane in each direction) and very steep but the views we got of the plain below were fantastic. Finally at the bottom, huge grassland stretched away to the mountainous ridges enclosing the crater on all sides. The driver of our cruiser is a rather careful driver so we were quickly separated from the other groups as we slowly wandered through enormous herds of wildebeest, zebra, buffalo, and gazelle. Large groups of female warthogs and their young were seen grazing on their knees side by side with the zebra and wildebeest. The road took us through a forest area where we saw firsthand the tree destruction from the elephants before again entering the grasslands. Again we saw numerous herds and one new animal: three hartebeest. Soon after this we spotted hippos in a shallow lake and a distant elephant dusting itself. By this point it was afternoon and we all gathered at a rest spot to eat lunch and compare what we had seen. We were very disappointed when we found out that other groups had seen lions, rhinos, hyena, and one group even saw a servet cat. I had a nice chat with our WM professor about the Hadzabe (Bushmen) in the area and we discussed hippos, lions, and the various birds around the nearby spring fed lake. Then it began to rain. Not a bad rain more of a gentle rain that swept all of the heat from the afternoon and dampened the dust on the roads. In this atmosphere we packed up and left for the second portion of the game drive.
We headed out with new determination to catch up with the other groups in terms of seeing new animals. Following the road they all came in on (different that the one we had) everyone scanned the grass for something to be visible. Opening the roof hatches (we closed them when it started raining) we spotted another cruiser stopped ahead staring at something. IT WAS A LION! No two lionesses sleeping away the afternoon by a little stream in the new sunshine just breaking through. One was even silly enough to roll on to her back and lie splayed out, her belly to the sun. Only a little further along, we came across two males sleeping in the shade of a large pile of rocks. These four lions were the introduction to the rhinos we saw in the distance, the three hyenas chilling in a mud puddle trying to stay cool, and four other lions were saw on our way out of the park. One of these last four lions was intently watching a herd of zebra and we spent close to 25 minutes watching her hoping she would go after something. She didn’t and our time was running short so we began the arduous climb out of the crater.
Everyone is feeling how long the day was today so the drive home was very quiet. I walked down to the tailors immediately after getting back to camp and picked up my last skirt that I had made, and ordered a dress using the fabric I bought on our last non-program day. So now I’m full from dinner and trying to convince myself to write a short paper before going to bed right away. I’ll make an outline (compromise so the guilty voice in my head will shhh and I don’t have to do any actual writing) so that tomorrow before afternoon classes I can crank it out.
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