TANZANIA - DAY 4 NGORONGORO CONSERVATION AREA & DRIVE TO SERENGETI NATIONAL PARK

We left the Ngorongoro Sopa hotel around 7:30 a.m. for our 170 Km (105 miles) drive to the Serengeti Sopa Hotel.  Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that the whole drive would be on roads that I described previously for the mountain.  It took us about 4 ½ hours to cover that mileage, plus we made a few stops along the way arriving around 2:00 p.m.

Before we left the hotel, we had a picture taken on the hotel grounds overlooking the crater.

Our first stop was at a lookout point over the crater about twenty minutes from the hotel.  I was trying to upload a video which would give you a pretty good idea of what the crater is like but I've given up on the internet speed in the hotel.  It would start uploading then quit.  So, here are a couple of pictures  in place.

The next two pictures are of a Masai village along the way.  We took pictures from the side of the road because if you stop at the entrance to the village, you have to pay them to allow you to take pictures and hear about some of their culture.  Obviously, they’ve learnt the art of capitalism….or is it marketing?  Maybe both!  (Telephoto lens would have been good here too).

Another stop was to hear a bit about the Whistling Thorn Acacia tree pictured below.  When the thorns are young, they are soft and Giraffes feed on them.

These are berries which grow on the trees.   Ants make holes in the berries and live inside these holes.  (You can see one of the holes in the berry).  When a giraffe starts feeding on the soft thorns, the ants come out and attack the giraffe.  At the same time, there is a whistling sound that is carried on the wind to other trees to warn of the impending danger (from the giraffe).  Our guide kicked the base of the tree to make it shake and we witnessed the ants coming out.  Unfortunately, the little guys were too small and were moving too fast for me to capture one in picture.  The ants are known as the guardian of the trees.

We stopped at an archaeological site called Oldepai Gorge.  The initial discovery was an accidental one by a paleontologist who mistakenly called it Olduvai Gorge.  That mistake is slowly being corrected.  Here is a picture of the Gorge.

Archaeologists have since discovered stone tools, animal fossilized bones and human fossilized bones in that order.   When they discovered the human fossilized bones, they determined that the thumb and index finger were significantly larger than the rest of the fingers and it was likely because of making the stone tools, hence the word handyman started out as a joke but has stuck.  This is a picture of some of the bones discovered.

This is a picture of some of the tools discovered.

We finally got to the hotel then went out for our first game ‘drive’ at 4:00 p.m.  If we thought the roads at Ngorongoro Crater were bad, we found out they were worse in the Serengeti National Park.  Here are a couple of pictures to give you an idea.

We took this turn at about one kilometre per hour and I was praying that nothing would happen to the vehicle's axle (I think that's what it's called).

This is one of the bridges that we crossed over.

I will start the Serengeti update in my next blog.  Hopefully, I'll get up to date soon.