Safari in Ngorongoro

It always happens something funny to me. Our tour guide told us the sun came out at 5:30 so I got up at 5 am, took a fast shower and went running to the hotel front yard. Then I set up my tripod and started waiting for the sun to come out. At that moment it was totally dark! Well, I was there at 5:20am and the sun did not show until 6:10 and by that time I was already having breakfast. I felt kind of stupid there, at 5:20 am waiting for something it would not show until an hour later J

At 7:30 we started our morning safari and we inmediately saw a group of cheetahs hunting. It was just breath taking! Around them there were 5 o 6 4x4 vehicles but that did not bother them., they just kept chasing animals. At one point one of the cheetahs even crossed the line of vehicles lined up to watch the show.

During the rest of the safari we saw other animals although we were not lucky enough to see lions.

It was time to meet our new guide in Tanzania  but we still had to get to the border between Kenia and Tanzania. First we had to pass Kenia’s control and then Tanzania´s. In order to go in Tanzania we had to pay 50$ more to get our VISA. Well, at least I got two stamps on my new passport! J Today we were changing guides so we had to tip him.

At the frontier we met with our new guide! He seemed to be much nicer and more knowleadgeable. On our way to Arusha he gave us some interesting data. Tanzania has 35 million people and it contains 120 differente tribes. Each tribe has its own language although all of them speak Swahili. Anyhow the comercial language is English.

Once we got to Arusha they took us to a nice hotel in the city and a new group joined us. Then I found a real photographer, so we chated for a while! I love talking about photography and traveling with people, I just never find people who likes the subject J I  have to tell you how good food in Africa it has been so far.

Well once we left Arusha we headed to Nnongoro which was around 3 hours from there! Things changed so much! We were going higher, almost 2500 hundred metres above the sea level so no mosquitos this time! The crater is around 1000 metres deep and has 21 kilometres of diameter, 260 square kms

The park closed its doors at 6pm and we got ther 5 minutes late! We were lucky the security guard was still there. From the entrance of the park to the hotel there was a 40 minute drive. At the welcome center they gave you a small introduction about the park. The road to the hotel was not too good and gave us a couple of frights during the way.

The hotel was just amazing, everything made of wood, very quite in the middle of nowhere surrounded by nature! Dinner was againl… excellent!....