Where we have been...part two

We had been driving for a couple of hours from Lake Manyara on some very nicely paved roads and after all the time we spent bouncing around inside the Land Cruisers, let me tell you, paved roads were a blessing. Then our driver said we are here and he turned onto a rutted, red dirt road, the went up at an impossible angle and we were back to bouncing around again. We slowly climbed for the next fifteen minutes past a coffee plantation and several small huts until we turned into a verdant treed and flowered entry, flanked by two white columns, to see this stark white Dutch Colonial farm house: our destination.

Home for the next two days would be The Manor. So realistically furnished with period pieces that we thought it had been there forever and were shocked to find out it had only been built five years earlier. The large vertical section you see was part of the original house built in 1911, but the rest of the place was almost brand new.

There are twenty cottages on the property each outfitted like ours, which is shown above. All had magnificent views of the valley below and plantation. The Main house was furnished magnificently in the same style with no details missed. Dinner was served in a beautiful dining room and for the first time on the trip it was not a buffet. The food up to this point had been ok with the Indian vegetarian selections being the best, but we were frankly getting tired of standing in line with a tray in our hands. Here we began to see how good food could be literally in the middle of nowhere.

The only issue we encountered at The Manor was the slow inconsistent Internet service that seemed capable of only serving one device at a time and there were seventeen of us, many with multiple devices. If anything this was a group connected to it's devices. Nevertheless, The Manor was a splendid home for two nights.

On the other hand, there are plenty of splendid places to stay a lot closer to home. The point of being here was to view wildlife in the Ngorongoro Crater. It is the largest unbroken caldera in the world. It is 2000 feet deep and is 65 miles across. Experts think it was created from a volcanic explosion that happened thirty five million years ago and affected areas as far away as the as the Serengeti. That was all very interesting, but what we carried about was that this was our first chance to see the Holy Grail of animal sighting, the Big Five, (elephant, lion, hippo, Cape buffalo and leopard) all in one place.

Quite naturally to get to the bottom of the crater one had to travel over even more impossibly steep, rutted, gravel roads strewn with large rocks. I hate to complain, but this was not a particularly pleasant experience and we were all getting bruises on our arms and legs from them flailing around. These are bush Land Cruisers and are not to be mistaken for the ones you see in the local supermarket parking lot. There is no padding, but lots of metal.

On the other hand, the wildlife sightings came very quickly and changed as we headed down from the forested rim to the flat plains of dried grass.

From the rim

Giraffe crossing the road near the rim. There are few trees on the crater's floor. The giraffes graze at the top.

Zebras enjoying a water hole at the bottom.

An elephant and her baby. We saw many young on this trip.

A couple of hippos out for a stroll which is actually unusual during the day.

The mating lions mentioned before.

A herd of Wildebeest ( one of the Ugly Five )

 

Finally a Cape Buffalo spotting on the ride back up. All we needed was the elusive leopard to score seeing the Big Five all in one spot on one game drive.

We'll no big five picture of a leopard to end that day and this post. Just one of two tired, dusty and disheveled travelers, after eight hours of bouncing around Ngorongoro Crater. At least we got four and had a great day, but I can tell you we were looking for ward to getting back to The Manor for a hot shower, cocktails and dinner.

The next morning would bring an hour bush plane flight to the fabled Serengeti, three nights at the tented Migration Bush Camp and a chance to see the largest migration of animals in the world. You can bet we were excited.

 

 

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