Ngorongoro Crater

It was time to leave. From here on, we were always headed towards home. We had our last breakfast. After we left, the camp crew would start breaking everything down. In 6-7 weeks a new camp would be built somewhere else. There are no permanent human settlements allowed in Serengeti National Park.

Everyone had become jaded. Without notice, we whizzed past animals that would have required a picture just two days ago. We had pictures of all of these animals, in fact, we had many of all these animals. It's as if we were collectors and didn't need these.

That's not an accurate account of our attitudes towards the animals. Most, if not all, of us had a great appreciation of how pristine the Serengeti was and how lucky we were to be there. But everyone was a little fatigued, and several have been ill.

I spotted a mirage off toward the left, and asked Good Luck to confirm what I saw.

"No, that's a lake," he said.

I had been looking at maps of the area, and didn't remember a lake out there.

"Which lake is it?" I asked.

There was a pause.

"Lake Good Luck!" he broke into a smile. Good Luck never steered us wrong about the wildlife, but he wasn't against having a good pull on your leg either.

We spotted the carcass of a gazelle that had been hit by a Land Cruiser laying on the road. It must have been a fresh hit, because the scavengers hadn't come in to eat it.

The last game drive of the trip was in Ngorongoro crater. It felt a little like Jurassic Park. The crater is unusual because it is the largest caldera in Africa that is unbroken and not flooded. No matter which direction we turned, we could not look out of the dead volcano. It was so deep, it had its own weather.

The herbivores in the crater were much more tolerant of us. We were getting much closer to wildebeest and zebra than on the Serengeti. Sometimes they were right next to the Land Cruiser. Flamingos were in the major pond. The sun was providing excellent reflections. You got two images of each bird, one up-side-down.

There was one animal we had not seen on the safari. While you're out there, you hear people talk about seeing The Big Five, which are the African elephant, cape buffalo, lion, leopard, and rhinoceros. So far, we hadn't seen the rhino. It's estimated there were only 21 in the crater. Two were spotted a few hundred yards from the road. It was possible to shoot them only with a long lens. They weren't the most exciting animals to watch. They just stood there motionless for minutes. I joked that they were really inflatable rhinos set out to make the tourists happy. Five more were spotted, but they were too far from the road to be photographed.

The rain was a factor. We had to have the tops of the Land Cruisers closed to prevent a soaking. Normally, with the tops open, it didn't matter which side of the vehicle you were on when we found animals. You always had a good view. But with them closed, sometimes you passed your camera to the person closest to the subject to get a shot through a window.

Most of the lions were sleeping, and people would comment that they had much better shots from a few days ago. It's true, we had great encounters on the Serengeti. Although we were happy to see Simba, we wish she would do more than lay there.

There was a steep one-way road into the crater and another pointed to the exit. On the way, we found one last mature male lion with a dark mane. Then it was up the side with a pause for a vista shot. The last game drive was over.