Ngorongoro Crater and the elusive rhino

Photo by Thomas Huston via wikicommons

Ngorongoro was cold. We wrapped ourselves up in every Maasai blanket we could find and huddled round the dinner table making ourselves smaller and tighter. There was a shortage of sleeping bags too - we hadn’t needed them at Panorama or Seronera Camps, and Erica and Eduardo very generously gave me one of theirs, so while I was guiltily warm in my luxurious four-person-for-one-woman tent, they shivered under one between the two of them. The upside was that our camp was shared with an elephant in the carpark and a herd of zebra outside the toilets, who stamped off in a nervous panic when I came out. Next to our Simba Camp was the upmarket Ngorongoro Safari Lodge at USD$1,000 per night. But I wouldn’t have swapped our cold and basic lodging with its dribbling showers, Athumani’s wholesome dinners, and my warm companions for anything. Except if the Lodge rooms had a personal rhino, I reflected, which one might expect at that price.

Early in the grey morning we set off for our much-anticipated sunrise drive down into the crater itself. The road was a little hairy in places with no barriers between us and the sudden drop down the cliff face to the crater floor, but Samwel knew what he was doing. As he drove he cheerfully explained that while there have been instances of lions attacking humans, they have generally involved careless tourists who get out of their cars. They don’t kill the Maasai who live the crater, because the Maasai know how to kill them with spears. Also, he added, the lions cannot attack in the afternoon. I wondered whether this was due to a leonine taboo, or perhaps they prefer a light snack such as an impala, and human boots are too chewy to digest at that time of day.

Samwel told us that there are only seven black rhino left in the 264 square kilometres of the Ngorongoro crater, after their numbers have been devastated by poachers, and we were desperately hoping to see one. Ours was a lucky car, Erica reminded us, and she certainly had been right so far. There are 500 elephants, compared with the 3,000 of Tarangire, and here in the crater was the area known as the Elephants’ Graveyard, where the older members of the herd come to die. It was littered with great skulls and jawbones. No tusks remained, of course. I had seen a sign on the Arusha road warning of a TZS 1 million shilling fine - USD$460 - for elephant poaching but it still continues today, and in fact is on the rise in the Northern Circuit due to corruption, increased demand and insufficient enforcement.

Ngorongoro did not disappoint. We saw many lions and lionesses, sleeping in the open surrounded by jeeps with their engines revving as they circled around the animals. The lions didn’t seem to notice us - except one, who passed two metres away from our Cruiser with its raised open roof, and looked up at me with his deep golden eyes. Its gaze was unnerving; as if it was saying, I could jump up there and drag you from your car and eat you, and I want you to know that, but instead I shall choose to have a nap. We saw him later dozing by a small stream. Two of the male lions were spooning, one with his dangerously soft-looking paw draped fondly over the other’s shoulder. A lioness was lying ungraciously on her back with her legs all over the place and her furry white belly bright in the morning sunlight. And the final two went furiously at it for an exhausting ten seconds, until she growled him off and he slumped to the ground victorious as if he’d been performing for hours.

There were animals everywhere - buffalo, impala, zebra, antelope, and giraffes all mixing their herds together, and ostriches foolishly running with their long silly legs. But no rhino. We stopped a number of times, as Samwel’s radio had been sounding off with possible locations, and once we stopped to gaze admirably at what looked to me like a pale grey rock, which Samwel thought may have been a rhino’s backside. I was not convinced. But reflecting on the devastating effects of human interaction with the rhino population, I wasn’t sure if we deserved to see one after all, and I was glad that they kept themselves safely hidden.

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More on Tanzania (chronological order):
Arusha, Tanzania - my first visit to sub-Saharan Africa
Tarangire National Park - meeting the elephants
The Spanish Sausage Plague - disaster strikes the Spaniards
Sunrise in the Serengeti - the plague lifts
Ngorongoro Crater and the elusive rhino - we look for rhinos and stare hard at a rock
Lake Manyara and the Last Supper - a little Swahili goes a long way
A goddamn flight on a goddamn plane - karma strikes a rude man as I head to Istanbul