Arie Goes to a Crater

This is the last day of my safari. You might want to start at the beginning.

Today was our only day in the Ngorongoro Crater. We woke up early and piled into the car. The gates to the Crater are supposed to open at 6:30am, but we were told that the rangers arrive at the park around 6:30 and then go around unlocking the gates. It's about a twenty minute drive to the floor of the Crater, and we were there around 7, not bad. For some dumb reason our resort didn't start serving breakfast until 6:30 (geniuses: your raison d'etre opens at 6:30, try serving breakfast before that), so we took a packed breakfast.

This and many other buffalo were waiting for us. Apparently the park service has been putting out fires for many years here, and fires tend to destroy taller grasses and allow shorter grasses to flourish. The increasing quantity of tall grass has led to more buffalo and fewer wildebeest and gazelle. These things are pretty damn big, that's for sure, no wonder they need all that grass. Most people say hippos are the most dangerous mammal here, but our guide thinks it's buffalo.

The African buffalo is one of the "big five", the five animals that Europeans tried to drive to extinction. The others are lions, leopards, elephants, and rhinos. Wealthy white Europeans (and Teddy Roosevelt) swarmed all over this region a century ago trying to kill as many as they could. With its macabre history, you'd think we could let the term die, but instead it's been reimagined as the five animals that the current generation of rich white people who show up here should try to view. This seems stupid to me -- the five were chosen because they were ferocious, not because they were rare or beautiful or interesting (giraffe > buffalo). But that's how it is. Our lodge gift shop sold "Big Five" t-shirts. (This here is a wildebeest, but you can't tell, right? I couldn't either. I think the key is the beard.)

Buffalo can weigh up to a ton. I just finished Guns, Germs, and Steel, which makes a big point about how there were no friendly animals like cows for sub-Saharan Africans to domesticate; apparently the African buffalo is dangerous and unpredictable and not amenable to pulling plows and being milked. Lions can kill buffalo if they work in teams, but other than that, even crocodiles will leave the adults alone (once in a long while hyenas will take down an adult). Unlike other prey, buffalo will sometimes fight back. There are instances where after lions have killed a buffalo, the rest of the buffalo will charge the lions and harass them for hours, even chasing them into trees (and not just the tree-climbing lions either).

We saw some zebras and some other animals, and then came upon a family of hyenas. I'm against hyenas, mainly because I'm a big fan of lions and you gotta support your team, but baby hyenas are pretty cute. This family only had one baby, and they had a little burrow and he kept poking his head out of the burrow. The hyenas were very close to various prey, mostly buffalo and zebra, but the prey wasn't scared -- I guess there weren't enough hyenas to pose a threat.

Next we saw some lions with a kill on a hillside. Unlike the Serengeti, you can't leave the roads in the Ngorongoro Crater, so we couldn't get too close. Using binoculars and zoom lenses, we watched as a lioness and her cubs polished off the kill and then trotted down the hill to join the dozing male. On the way they were joined by another lioness with two more cubs. As you can see, these cubs looked pretty happy.

One of the baby cubs had a feather in his mouth for some reason and he really wanted to keep it -- he kept dropping it, stopping, picking it up, and then running to catch up with the others. It was adorable. The lions curled up in the shade near the river and started to nap. I guess the whole pride had eaten, so they were content to lie around for the day.

We also saw a couple of buffalo lumber slowly away from the lions. They probably were too big to be in any danger, but why take chances? For some reason, each buffalo had a little white bird who seemed to be his friend. Each buffalo's bird stood near him while he ate grass, and when they lumbered away from the lions, the birds hopped alongside. On these lions you can see the faint rosettes -- cubs have them, and they're visible sometimes on females' bellies, but they fade entirely on adult males.

We ate breakfast and then drove for a while looking at the wildlife. Buffalo when they're grazing tend to form these long single-file lines. I'm not sure why. One possibility is that they can see more of their surroundings that way, so it's more likely that one will spot an approaching predator. But buffalo are so big that they don't have too much to fear from predators (only certain lion prides can hunt the adults). Not sure.

There were a lot of zebra, especially a lot of baby zebra. One thing I found interesting is that some (but not all) of the baby zebra are brown and white instead of black and white. And as this picture shows, it's not just the color of the fur -- the brown fur is very different from the white fur. It's much longer and puffier. The white fur looks like short hair, the brown fur like shag carpeting. Most brown zebra apparently turn black with age, but a few don't.

We also saw ostrich and warthog. I don't have a lot to say about these warthog. They have big teeth, they enter their burrows backward so they can spring out at predators that attack, all the big cats eat them, people carve their tusks like elephant tusks only smaller, and when they eat they kneel down so it looks like they're praying. Or possibly when they pray they muck around in the dirt so it looks like they're eating. Who can say?

Next we drove to the hippo pool. At first we thought there was a large rock in the center with hippos around it, but then we realized that the large rock was in fact the backs of dozens of hippos. It was still cool enough that many of them hadn't yet fully submerged and their backs were dry, making them look like grey rocks. As we watched, the day heated up and one by one the hippos did barrel rolls, getting themselves wet.

There was tasty-looking grass around the pool, but none of the grazers were anywhere near it. Maybe it's the wrong type of grass. More likely, maybe the hippos don't like zebra company. Hippos are mean and I don't know how well the tolerate other animals. Well, there was this black bird that was hopping from hippo to hippo pecking their backs and they kept trying to roll him under, but he'd just hop along like a guy on a log in a river. They had to tolerate him. In this photo are what look like ducks. The hippos tolerate them too.

There were also a tall white bird. The hippos didn't seem to care about that guy either. Down the river a bit, zebra were drinking from the pond. The hippos didn't mind them, or if they did, they didn't give any indication. Like, for instance, one possible indication would be chasing the zebra down, drowning them, and devouring them. They do that sometimes (rarely), but not today.

One hippo was on the riverbank walking around -- a fairly rare occurrence during the day. He didn't seem to be eating, though. We watched as he sort of lumbered around for a while and then walked over to the riverbank. I got my camera ready for the swan dive (or the hippo dive) but it was more like watching someone get into a very cold pool -- he stepped up to the bank, his hind legs kept walking while his front legs stayed still until all four were perched at the end, and then he sort of slowly stepped into the river. Pretty soon he was swimming along happily.

Here's a photo of the most punk zebra I've ever seen -- the kid dyed his mane to match his stripes. Well, he's too young to have dyed his own mane, his parents probably did it for him. What am I saying, this dude's parents don't get along. Probably he lives with his mom (most zebras are nursed for a year), but his dad gets to see him on weekends and one weekend his dad helped him dye his mane so the kid would think he was "cool". Probably also to piss of his mother, and when he got home on Sunday night she was all "what have you done to your mane?" and he said "what's the big deal?" Whatever, this zebra totally pwns. He'll probably grow up to be a stockbroker, if he isn't eaten by lions.

Near the hippo pool was the flamingo lake. There were no roads near it, but from what I could see, there were roughly one trillion flamingos. This is a really bad place to be a brine shrimp. Assuming that's what they eat. I don't really know. We also saw some zebra eating grass right next to a zebra skull. Personally if you put a human skull next to me at the sushi bar, it might temper my appetite, but not these guys. Photo below.

Next we found elephants. Although this isn't really impressive -- when your target is fourteen feet tall, weighs six tons, and walks around smashing trees that are in his way with his enormous tusks as he stamps around, you don't get much credit for finding him. Anyway, we found some elephants and watched as they ate lots of plants.

We stopped to use the bathrooms and left the car roof and door open. This proved to be a mistake. As I was walking back toward the car, I saw a vervet monkey jump onto the roof and then swing into the vehicle. I knew what was coming (because in Cambodia a monkey stole my driver's food from our tuk-tuk) and I ran over and tried to kick some monkey ass, but I was too slow -- the monkey found our lunchbox, pulled out a bag of crackers and a pastry, and jumped out and climbed a tree.

Another monkey landed on the roof, so I grabbed my cameras and slammed the door. The noise scared him off the car, and I got in -- the rest stayed away while I was in there. Our guide came back, secured the rest of the food, and closed up the car. Then we stood and watched as the stupid monkey slowly devoured our crackers.

Our guide told me that when a monkey wants food, you have to let him have it, because otherwise he'll either bite you or take a camera, climb up a tree, and then drop it. My feeling is: Whatev, Chamberlain, I don't negotiate with terrorists. I wanted to throw rocks at the vervet until he gave our crackers back, but apparently some pansy law says you can't throw rocks at wildlife inside conservation areas. And it doesn't have an "unless they steal your crackers" exception. Here's a photo of the zebra and skull that I couldn't fit above.

Anyway, after the stupid monkey ate our crackers, he tried to eat the pastry, but evolution has not yet taught him about plastic wrap. He couldn't pull it open (in fairness, I can't most of the time either) so he ended up trying to eat the plastic wrap. That was at least somewhat satisfying. There was a big sign saying not to feed the animals, but it's not like we did it on purpose. We got back in the car and drove on.

Next we saw another lion with another kill. Again, though, she was far from the road, so we didn't get a good look. I think it was a wildebeest. Also there were some elephants in very tall grass. One of them was giving a bunch of white birds a ride around the grass. I assume that they switch off, and soon the little birds will fly the elephant around the Crater (I envision one supporting each foot). Also there were hartebeest and ostriches.

Lunch time. We pulled up to a large lake at a site that's been set aside for people to eat at, though I'm not sure if the animals know that. There were a ton of other groups, some of which were very large. We ate sitting in the car -- the actual picnic area had a ton of marabou storks and kites and we watched other visitors guard their food. After lunch we walked a bit and saw another few hippos in the lake, but we didn't walk too far because of lions. Then back in the car. Here's a photo of that other hippo I mentioned above getting ready to dive.

This photo is from the drive out of the Crater. The Crater gets a lot of rain but the surrounding area doesn't -- somehow the Crater traps rainclouds. So the land looks very interesting sometimes, with lots of clouds and then sunny land right in front of it. I took a lot of photos and I'm putting them anywhere where I don't have appropriate wildlife photos (like the first photo).

So we'd seen all the major fauna except rhinos, and there were rhinos somewhere in the Crater, and we'd been looking all day. So had everyone else -- every time we passed a car, the guides would ask each other (in Swahili) if they'd seen any rhinos, the answer was no. We were beginning to get pessimistic when we saw a bunch of cars clustered in a spot on the road. We drove up to them and followed the lines of the lenses and binoculars to two large grey blobs. Not the ones in the picture, those are hippos.

Sure enough, these were rhinos. A mother and her baby. At first they were just resting on the ground, but as we watched they got up and walked around a bit, and then the baby started to nurse. I bet rhino milk is tasty. They're called black rhinos but they're not really black. It turns out they're called black rhinos only because white rhinos are called white rhinos (and "white" might be a mistranslation of the Afrikaans word "wijd", meaning "wide" as in the lips -- white rhinos have broader lips). In real life they're the same color.

The Crater is one of the few places where black rhinos live. There were once hundreds, but during the colonial era, Europeans hunted them for sport. Now there are fewer than two dozen left. I'm not sure what kind of jerk can look at one of these and think it would be fun to kill. Poaching continues, of course, thanks to ongoing demand for rhino horn, used for dagger handles in the middle east and in traditional Chinese medicine (it's not an aphrodisiac, it's used for fever). It's such a problem that some countries tranquilize rhinos and remove their horns so that no one will poach them. If it were me, I would tranquilize and remove the poachers.

At one point a bunch of wildebeest walked over, and four of them lined up in front of the rhinos and four behind. It looked like a formal honor guard. There were a few hyenas around; my theory is that the mother rhino said to the wildebeest, "if my baby gets killed by hyenas or poachers or Germans or whatever, basically I'll just rampage and kill every wildebeest I see" and they decided they'd better guard the little guy for their own safety.

Rhinoceroses, or rhinocerim, are pretty awesome. They're really big, weighing more than a ton, they live a really long time, and they have those cool horns. Their brains are small for their size. They can live to be sixty years old and they have a great sense of smell, though poor eyesight. A group of rhinos is called a "crash", though I don't know who makes those up. I think it should be me. Rhinos have an ancestor who was twenty feet tall; too bad that dude's not still around. Here's a river that runs through the Crater.

Black rhinos have eighty-four chromosomes, the most of any mammal. They stole the extras from giraffes, who are miffed about it but can't do anything because rhinos have those sharp horns. Maybe the giraffes would try something if they knew that the horns are made of keratin (the protein that makes hair and teeth), not ivory, but they don’t and it's important for conservation purposes that no one tell them. Black rhinos mostly have two horns, a big one in front and a smaller one in back, though some black rhinos grow a third horn behind the other two. They can weigh up to two tons. The rhinos, not the horns.

We watched the rhinos for a while. Once they settled down, we drove a bit more and passed another lion resting in tall grass. We also checked on the lioness with the kill, but she was still doing her thing. Next we saw a couple of elephants, one of which had enormous tusks. I mean, tusks can get to ten feet long, and these weren't ten feet, but they must have been four or five feet long. As far as I'm concerned, that's a lot of tusk.

Some more lions, some zebra, and then it started to pour -- horrible downpour all of a sudden -- and we decided to call it a day (well, our guide decided that and didn't tell us, but I was ready to go so I didn't protest). I took this photo while it was pouring, strange to be in heavy rain and see the sky. Couldn't spot any rainbows. We drove up the steep access road and back to our absurdly fancy lodge to relax for the rest of the day.

So that was pretty much it. The next morning we checked out, piled into the car, and drove back to town. On the way we stopped at a souvenir store, called a "curio" store -- the word's everywhere here. The store was stuffed with ebony carvings, but we managed to find a few things whose creation didn't require the destruction of endangered species.

Next stop was the place where we had our first night, this time for lunch. Again, lunch was comically fancy. After lunch, our guide gave me a lift to Arusha, where I got a little hotel for the night -- back to traveling on a budget, sadly.

The hotel was a decent place, with internet and hot water. What it didn't have was cold water -- the power kept going out, and the cold water tank was uphill and served by a pump, so it was empty. The hot water heater, though, was fine. So I took a very, very hot shower. The next morning, our guide picked me up and drove me to Arusha airport (for $50, allegedly the standard taxi rate for a car to the airport -- I think that's right), and I was off to Ethiopia.

So that was my safari. Good times. You could go on to read about my trip to Ethiopia.