August 14 – Early Morning in Ngorongoro Crater

This is August 14th at 8am and this Kellie and Wally calling from the floor of the Ngorongoro Crater. We awoke this morning before 5am and met Paul and Prosper at 6 and we descended down into the Ngorongoro Crater. Mother lion and cubsWe have the crater to ourselves now and we have been down here for a couple of hours, but soon the place will fill up with Land Rovers from other lodges. However, we are here by ourselves now and we already had an amazing morning. As we drove down into the crater, the full moon was still in the sky, in the dawn sky, the same full moon that we enjoyed seeing from the balloon ride from Serengeti in the early morning.

One of the first animals we saw was a bat ear fox, actually a pair of bat ear foxes. A short time later Prosper spotted a black rhino, of course only his eyes could see it, we got our binoculars out and we saw the hulk of the black rhino at least 2 kilometers away, you could see how massive it was.

Hippos staying coolA little later we found 2 female lions and 2 cubs playing in the early morning light. We stopped the Land Rover and this was a great opportunity for photography with the golden morning light on the lions.

Now we stopped to have our breakfast on a pond that is full of hippos. It was very noisy when we got here with the hippos making their grunting sound and yawning. Prosper just looked across the water on the other side and spotted a female lion watching us. It is still a very peaceful morning in the crater and we have got a lot of hours looking for animals and adventures down here to come, but what a great way to start the day in the Ngorongoro Crater.


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