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Ngorongoro Conservation Area

The road out of Arusha is part of the Kinshasha Highway and is well paved, so initially, we made good time. However, once we turned off the highway to head west, we encountered the worst dirt road of the trip! It was so bad that eventually, one of the passengers asked the driver to slow down as he was hitting his head on the ceiling of the truck!

We proceeded south-west in Tanzania and began to climb the outer edge of the Ngorongoro Crater, a volcanic (?) crater some 600 ft high and covering 265 square kilometers at its base. The first time we saw it, we stopped only to take pictures from above, as it was on the agenda for the way back. Here is a picture of me on the edge of the crater.

Olduvai Gorge

We took a little sidetrack on the way into the Serengeti to stop at Olduvai Gorge. We didn't go right down into the area, but we did have lunch at the visitor's centre. This gorge is famous as the site at which the Leakey's did a lot of their earliest studies about humanoid history.

These giraffes were seen as we headed to the gorge. We saw them often in this environment, surrounded by no high vegetation, only the squat Whistling Acacia. Easier to look out for predators, I guess.

Here is the Gorge as it extends along the Rift Valley. Clearly a very hot and dry place to work. The rock formation in the foreground had several layers of varying colour and composition, which were explained to us by a guide from a Kenyan university.

Several water dishes and plants are placed near the visitor's centre, probably to draw these birds out. I have yet to look up the names of these two.

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