Ngorongoro Crater Safari Tanzania

After breakfast, you will descend into the Ngorongoro Crater also often referred to as the “Eden of Africa”. The largest unbroken caldera in the world; the Ngorongoro Crater is unparalleled in terms of wildlife concentration. Your drive will be in constant contact with other drivers to locate the best sightings of animals and with a little luck, you will be able to spot the big 5 inside the Crater. Lunch will be served at the picnic site and late in the afternoon we will drive back to the Crater rim and drive to your lodge at Karatu; a lodge-like! Destination: Ngorongoro Crater Conservation Area Accommodation Options: Luxury: Neptune Ngorongoro Luxury Lodge Mid-range: Ngorongoro Crater Lodge Budget: Simba A Campsite Meals Plan: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner Drinking Water throughout Attractions Ngorongoro Crater Safari Park Lake Magadi: There are so many memorable places to visit on nature vacation in Tanzania. Within the Ngorongoro Crater itself, Lake Magadi, shallow, azure blue, fiercely alkaline from sodium carbonate, is fringed by hundreds of long-legged pink flamingos. Most are lesser flamingos, distinguished by their dark red bills, which eat blue-green spirulina algae. But there are also many greater flamingos with black-tipped pink bills, slightly bent to facilitate sifting shellfish from the rich bottom mud. The lake shrinks noticeably in the dry season, leaving thick, crystalline salt pans used as licks by jackals, hyenas, and other animals to supplement their diet. Outside the Ngorongoro Crater, but still within the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, are many other regions well worth visiting on your African Mecca expedition tour of Tanzania. Lerai Fever Tree Forest: The Lerai Fever Tree Forest, which consists of tall, slim yellow barked acacias forming an airy, lace-canopied wonderland of glades, is much frequented by elephant, rhino, eland, bushbuck, hyrax, and hundreds of birds. This foliage is the preferred food of the rare, black rhinoceros, but the old forest is regenerating slowly, because of damage by elephants, which tear off whole branches rather than merely grazing. Gorigor Swamps: Seedlings are spreading through the Gorigor Swamps, home to hippopotamus and wading birds, and the favored drinking place of thousands of ungulates during the dry season. A younger Fever Tree forest is now forming new groves at the base of the Ngoitokitok Springs, the home ground of the famous Tokitok pride of lions, film, and television personalities in their own right. Olduvai Gorge and Laetoli Ngorongoro Safari: Lake Ndutu and Lake Maseko are also on the migratory route in the Rift Valley, not far from Olduvai Gorge, where the ancestors of mankind began the journey towards civilization, with the fabrication of the earliest tools and the building of the first human settlements. At Laetoli, hominid footprints of our genetic ancestors and their relatives, have been found in sedimentary rock 3.7 million years old. Shifting Sands: Ash from Ol Dionyo has formed Shifting Sands – a black dune of moving sand a hundred meters in length, and nine meters high, which ingeniously moves slowly across the plains at a rate of 15 meters every year. Olmoti Crater and Empakaai Crater: You can take gentle, guided walks to two other nearby craters. Olmoti Crater is a shallow, grassy hollow, very quiet and lovely, where Maasai pasture their cattle alongside eland, bushbuck, reedbuck, and an occasional buffalo. Empakaai Crater is half-filled by an unusually deep soda lake. Nasera Rock: Rising 80 meters from the foot of the Gol Mountains, monolithic Nasera Rock is home to mountaineering klipspringers, baboons, and varied birds. Salei Plains and Ol Karien Gorge: Ol Karien Gorge is a sheer rock-sided ravine at the end of the vast, bare Salei Plains. It is a Mecca for twitchers, because rappel’s griffon vulture breeds there in March and April. Oldeani Mountain: To the southwest of Ngorongoro crater, bamboo-clad Oldeani Mountain feeds the stream that supports the Lerai Forest. Hadzabe Tribe: Lake Eyasi, close to Ngorongoro is still home to the Hadzabe Bushmen of East Africa who subsists entirely from the wild, communicating by clicks and whistles. Ol Doinyo Lengai & Lake Natron: Known to Maasai as “The Mountain of God”, Ol Doinyo Lengai is still active, last erupting in 2007. Lake Natron, far below, provides a toxic, protective moat for Africa’s largest concentration of breeding flamingos.

On this day after a leisurely breakfast at the lodge, you will choose between visiting a Masai Village and going for a nature walk in the forests of Ngorongoro (at a small extra fee). Guided by an armed ranger you will walk in the forest trails and if lucky you might bump into herds of buffaloes, and elephants as well as other forest species like the duikers, also lion leopards, etc. After the activities, you will drive back to Arusha town with a brief stop at Karatu and Mto Wa Mbu market towns where you may mingle with the locals and do some shopping if you so wish. End of the 03 days Safari in Ngorongoro Crater. Thank you for choosing Paradise Adventure Vacations, We hope to see you again.