Tanzania Part 7

Day 7: The Ngorongoro Crater

My words will not do this place justice. There’s a reason it’s a World Heritage Site and everyone on the planet is tripping over each other to preserve it. On a lucky day we could have seen a few of all the other large animals we saw on the trip with an exception of some of the cats.

The crater is one of the few places that you can still see wild Black Rhinos. If you go you might see one, une, uno, один, 1.

One being nearly a whole percent of what are left of their population in the wild. Having thought that our luck was used up finding the great migration we had no expectations around seeing a Rhino. Secretly I had harbored hopes that like some of the fickle beasts I’ve attempted to photo one would let us glimpse it then happily turn its butt toward my lens as it walked off into the woods.

Early in the morning we saw exactly this a single black rhino incredibly far off in the distance walking away from us towards thick tree cover. I managed to get a simple profile shot as it turned briefly through the haze. Like a child finding a Unicorn my heart raced as I watched it disappear into the woods.

However, I wasn’t prepared for what would happen next. Over the course of the next two hours we managed to spot not one or two more but NINE more. I might as well be writing that we saw a T-Rex as it’s more believable than saying we saw 10 Black Rhino. Thankfully I have photos to back up the statement.

As if on queue to not be upstaged we also saw our first male lion.

“It was a good day.”

https://www.flickr.com/photos/adamcecc/sets/72157651976396994