Day Six - Serengeti to Ngorongoro Crater

At breakfast after our first night in Serengeti, a married couple of Sydneysiders said they saw an elephant come through our campsite that night. It stopped at the water tank, had a drink, rubbed itself up against the bus and carried on. We did not believe them as they were the only ones who saw it.

Sure enough, on our second night, the same elephant came tromping through the site. It stopped at the water tank, had a drink, looked really confused at all of us whisper yelling HOLY FUCK ITS AN ELEPHANT WHAT THE FUCK DO WE DO OH MY GOD, walked through the tents without taking any of them down and carried on its merry way.
Holy fuck.
Elephants are gigantic. They are also surprisingly quiet and graceful. It was very dark out and the tents were maybe four feet apart; the elephant walked through them like we would walk through an office.
Amazing.

We carried on today to Ngorongoro Crater.
The crater used to be a mountain probably as high as Kilimanjaro, but it is a volcano and as a result, blew up. It is a crater now.
Things in Tanzania are named like coral in Australia - very obviously. Serenget is Swahili for "great plains". Ngorongoro is traditionally one of the areas that the nomadic Maasai people tend to settle in. They are cow herders and the crater is named after the sound the cow's bell makes.

We don't have a lot of time to do much of anything here. It took a while to arrive over more shit roads. The days and nights are equal length as we are almost right on the Equator. We are told that there is less protection from the animals here than there was in Serengeti - amusing because there was zero protection at night in Serengeti. What our guide meant that was in Serengeti, the animals pretty well kept to themselves; they knew where the camps and lodges were and kept a wide berth (except, apparently, GIANT ELEPHANTS). The animals here? Not so much. Instead, there are guards who go around at night scaring them away with rifles. Well, that's fantastic!
We are fortunate to not require this.

The temperature here is a bit cooler at night as the altitude is a lot higher than in Serengeti. We are warned about this and dress for bed appropriately, though I end up stripping off most of my warm stuff in the middle of the night. My sleeping bag is amazing.
The hyenas are a bit more plentiful here, as are the warthogs. Who knew that warthogs were nocturnal? There are also more lions at night.

Next up: More Ngorongoro Crater, including lions!