Out of the Serengeti and back into the Ngorongoro land, we are seeing the Massai people again. It is easier to pick out their villages as they are scattered throughout. Most of them are authentic and not for the tourists.

Driving up to the crater, the change in the landscape is incredible. From spectacular, flat, dusty plains to beautiful, green, rolling hills and tropical trees in less than 15 km. It is enough to send shivers down your spine, the beauty of it all.

Our big activity today, (Because everything we’ve seen so far doesn’t count, right?) is to drive through the Ngorongoro Crater. We are promised the opportunity to see some new animals and experience yet another type of area where the large animals of Africa like to roam.

At the lookout point, you can see the whole crater, all the way down, from one end to the other. It looks small. I’m not sure what we are going to see in this seemingly small, isolated and very surreal ecosystem. Where do all the animals go? I have my doubts as we make our way down into the crater itself.

That was an experience. We’ve been on some bumpy, questionable roads during our time here, but this was another level yet again. The road was super steep, it was bumpy, it was on the edge of a cliff, it was narrow – thank goodness it was only meant for one-way traffic – and it was 4 km long. At the end of the road we end up in this enormous wide-open space. There is a huge body of water in the center, flatlands surrounding it and then off to one end was a huge forested area and it was all surrounded by the crater walls which were covered in trees.

We are not expecting to see anything new, but we will see the animals in a very different environment. The wildebeests and zebras here will not make the migration up to Kenya, however, apparently, they will still do a migration within the crater, moving as a herd from one end to the other. Innate instinct, I guess. There were hundreds of them here, mixed in with all the gazelle. From the top, it doesn’t look like there’d be room for all these animals, once you are in the crater, you realize just how enormous it is.

Wait a second…what is that? African Buffalo!! Another one of the Big Five!! Well, isn’t this just a stroke of good luck. There were a few of them roaming around, what was interesting about them was the swarm of flies that hovered around them and would follow them as they moved. You almost saw the swarm before you saw the buffalo itself.

Driving down by the water we saw hundreds and hundreds of flamingos. Do you know what? They really do stand on one leg. It is a hunting technique; they will stomp on whatever pleases them. In amongst all the flamingos were a bunch of herons and other birds and ducks. A veritable ecosystem.

You are not able to drive through the whole crater, only one section of it has a few pathways to follow, so you are ‘limited’ to what you can see. It is a bit of luck of the draw as to what animals will be on your side of the crater when you drive through. Up until now, we’ve been counting ourselves pretty darned lucky.

Driving towards the forested area, Paul thinks he sees something in the distance. Like the really far distance. This guy has eyes like an eagle. Even with our binoculars, we have a hard time making it out. But, it is true, what we are seeing is really that. The last of the Big Five. We weren’t holding out any hope at all of seeing one, especially here in this ‘small’ area. But there they were, three of them. Black Rhinoceroses!!! Unbelievably cool.

We asked about predators here and there are lions and leopards. Seeing as how the prey can’t exactly get out of here, I wondered why the predator population doesn’t explode. To mitigate this, the park rangers will transplant some of them as needed to other parks. The vultures don’t get as nice a treatment, unfortunately.

The only animal in the park that can climb out on their own is the elephant – yes, there are elephants here too! (We didn’t see any.) They will actually use the road to walk on so sometimes vehicles can get trapped behind them as they are walking up. Ha ha!

In the jungle area, we looked and looked for any other animals but they were all doing a very good job at hiding from us. Instead, we stopped for a lunch break and admired the large variety of birds that came to visit us, hoping for scraps.

I can’t believe that this is the end of our game drives. It was incredible. We got to check so many bucket list items off the list. We even added new ones and then checked those off too.

The Big Five?                                              The Ugly Five?

• Lion                                                          – Hyena
• Leopard                                                   – Wildebeest
• Elephant                                                  – Marabou Stork
• African Buffalo                                        – Vulture
• Rhinoceros                                              – Warthog

Unbelievable.