Just the word Serengeti, for me, conjures visions of ancient nomadic peoples wandering around in loin clothes, carrying spears and living in harmony with wildlife. The Serengeti lies within East Africa's Rift Valley; from the confluence of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden the Rift Valley makes its way south across Djibouti, Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and finally into Tanzania and it was from this wide plain that humanity entered it’s adolescence and migrated across the continents. What really excited me about the Serengeti was being in that place, understanding what life meant for the first of our ancestors and feeling some brotherhood with those early humans.
We stayed at a new safari lodge, the Simba Lodge, which was just outside of the Ngorongoro Crater Conservation Area. We relished in the quiet and spent 2 days catching up on sleep and our books. The last day of our stay we took a drive into the Ngorongoro Crater. I had been told the Serengeti was the best place in the world to do a safari, but even that didn’t prepare me for the raw beauty of the crater and the unthinkable number of animals wandering the crater’s valley floor.
The Ngorongoro Crater floor is wide and flat and is a sort of Garden of Eden that supports the densest wildlife I’ve ever experienced. There was literally never a moment on our drive when a zebra, wildebeest or water buffalo couldn’t be seen. We saw lions sleeping, we saw lions peeing (on our car), we saw lions hunting and we saw lions fighting (just in front of us as we were taking pictures). We saw the nearly extinct black rhino, which are so rare that many have armed guards with them 24/7 to prevent poaching. We saw hippo, elephant, ostrich, hyena and more.
To be in a place that wild and see that our world is made up of more than streets, cars and the internet is to examine your place in it and your place in the universe and to contemplate what it really means to be an animal.
We stayed at a new safari lodge, the Simba Lodge, which was just outside of the Ngorongoro Crater Conservation Area. We relished in the quiet and spent 2 days catching up on sleep and our books. The last day of our stay we took a drive into the Ngorongoro Crater. I had been told the Serengeti was the best place in the world to do a safari, but even that didn’t prepare me for the raw beauty of the crater and the unthinkable number of animals wandering the crater’s valley floor.
The Ngorongoro Crater floor is wide and flat and is a sort of Garden of Eden that supports the densest wildlife I’ve ever experienced. There was literally never a moment on our drive when a zebra, wildebeest or water buffalo couldn’t be seen. We saw lions sleeping, we saw lions peeing (on our car), we saw lions hunting and we saw lions fighting (just in front of us as we were taking pictures). We saw the nearly extinct black rhino, which are so rare that many have armed guards with them 24/7 to prevent poaching. We saw hippo, elephant, ostrich, hyena and more.
To be in a place that wild and see that our world is made up of more than streets, cars and the internet is to examine your place in it and your place in the universe and to contemplate what it really means to be an animal.
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