TANZANIA - DAY 2

We left for our approximately 4-hour drive to Ngorongoro Crater on Thursday morning and arrived at our hotel around 2:00 p.m.  The hotel (one of the Sopa lodges) is a beautiful 5 star hotel and is the only one that is on the edge of the crater.  There are monkeys scampering up and down poles around the grounds.  Here are a few pictures of the hotel.  This picture was taken from the dining room while we were having lunch on Thursday after we arrived.

This is the ceiling of the dining room above the fireplace.

And this is the fireplace and a part of the dining room.

 Here are a couple of pictures of our room.

And here is a picture of the setting sun peeking through a gap in the clouds.  Took this from our room.

Although this is considered a 5-star hotel, unfortunately, the combination of this being a much larger hotel than the one we stayed at in Arusha and the lack of electricity in Tanzania forces shower restrictions between 5:00 a.m. – 8:00 a.m. and between 5:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m. 

One of the policies of the hotel is that after dark, all guests have to be escorted back to their rooms by one of the security guards as some of the animals sometimes come up for a visit.

We found out today that we bought a private tour so there are only the two of us in the Toyota Land Cruiser for the whole safari.  Ngorongoro Crater is 1,800 meters (5,900  ft.) above sea level.  The crater itself is 610 meters (2,000 ft.) deep and the crater floor covers 260 sq. kilometres (100 square miles), all approximate measurements.

Friday we set out on our tour of the crater and are very excited about it.  I hope to have lots of animal pictures in the next update.