Ngorongoro crater – A living Eden

The King eats!
The King eats!

Now that I am back from another wildlife photo tour in Botswana, Africa. It became imperative that I finish posting the pictures and experiences from the previous ones.

Ngorongoro Conservation Area is a part of the Serengeti Ecosystem. The main feature of the NCA is the Ngorongoro Crater, a large, unbroken, unflooded volcanic caldera. The crater, which formed when a giant volcano exploded and collapsed on itself some two to three million years ago, is 610 m (2,000 ft) deep and its floor covers 260 sq km giving a diameter of roughly 20 km. Estimates of the height of the original volcano range from fifteen to nineteen thousand feet (4500 to 5800 metres) high.

This “natural enclosure” though small has varied type of mini ecosystems within it. There is a salt water lake, forests and plains. An animal once it gets into the crater usually stays there and thus you have a wide variety of species.

We stayed in Ngorongoro for 3 days and the highlight of the visit and the entire Tanzania experience was seeing the critically endangered Black Rhino and a pride of lions feasting on a wildebeest

Our GPS trial in the Ngorongoro crater
Our GPS trial in the Ngorongoro crater