Africa's Eden

 

During a four-day safari, I was able to visit three separate national parks in northern Tanzania, each one distinct in its landscape and containing different animals.

N’gorogoro Crater, declared a friend of mine before I left for Tanzania, is a miracle, an enduring Eden.  The crater used to be a volcano, approximately the same size as Kilimanjaro but a little to the west, alongside the imposing wall of the Great Rift Valley.  When this volcano blew its top 2 to 3 million years ago, it created a fully contained bowl—the crater wall is uninterrupted for the approximately 120 miles of its circumference.  The big bowl is about 20 miles across, and the floor of the bowl is about 2000 feet below the crater rim. 

Because of these natural geological protections, the ecosystem inside the crater flourishes unbothered by the world outside.  Which means it contains a staggering diversity of wildlife. 

Visiting the N’gorogoro Crater presents the intrepid safari-er with so, so many animals that it’s hard to keep track.  It’s not just that there are so many kinds of animals, but that each kind is there in such overwhelming numbers. 

I kept a list of the critters I encountered in the crater:

Baboon

Great white egret

Plains zebra

Wildebeest

Ostrich

Grant's gazelle

White rhino

Thomson's gazelle

African Cape buffalo

Warthog

Red-knobbed coot

Flamingo

Black-winged stilt

Hippo

Guinea fowl

Elephant

Crowned crane

African spoonbill

Pink-backed pelican

Gray heron

Lion

Jackal

Kori bustard

Eland

Cattle egret

Taveta weaver

Fan-tailed widowbird

Hyena 

Just to be clear:  I was in this crater for maybe 5 hours. Incredible.  It was kinda like I was in the biggest zoo in the world except all the animals are roaming around free and I’m encaged in a jeep and they’re gazing at me with mild disinterest.

Stay tuned for another Tanzanian national park, and another stupidly long list of animals sighted.