Up early-ish for a 7am start to the game drive. No chance of seeing Kili this morning, it's overcast with heavy showers. The heaviest of which coincides with the arrival and therefore packing of the vehicles.
It's a fairly long drive to Ngorongoro and beyond to the Serengeti but we have a peculiar numer of stops for diesel, ice (none found) and rubber (to tie the luggage on more securely). Our guide, Herman, starts off fairly chatty and informative but runs out of steam pretty quick. The first hour or so are on reasonable roads but they quickly turn to gravel and then dirt. The Landcruisers seem to make light work of it, though. We see a few giraffe and ostrich on the way to the Ngorongoro gate. Before we get there we pass Lake Manyara (named after the local exotic plants, which are poisonous). The far side of the lake is marked by a clear escarpment of two or three hundred metres at the edge of the Great Rift Valley. Quite an impressive sight, even if it isn't the two thousand feet of sheer cliff from jungle that you see in the movies.
At the Ngorongoro gate there's a little information shop where there's a handy relief map of the crater and surrounds and a man who [spontaneously] explained it all to me. The main crater is 27km across and the result of a volcano collapsing in on itself 2.5 million years ago. [It turns out to be 27 square km in area, but that's still impressive.] The ash that was spat up fell into what is now the Serengeti plain, thanks to the prevailing wind. The ash doesn't allow for roots of any substance, hence the extensive flat grasslands. Serengeti meaning "endless plain" in Masai. There is a similar picture (read: change to desolate scenery) to the west of Mount Meru [which lies] just north of Arusha. Only a single peak in the "range" is still active and is well overdue.
Up and around Ngorongoro the scenery changes again to dense thick forest. At the rim of the crater you're 2200m ([ranging] up to 2500m) above sea level so it's quite common to have cloud drift through the roads. The view over the crater is quite impressive. We drove round to Simba-A camp for lunch and were harangued by black kites who managed to snatch sandwiches from people's hands. The bad news is that not only were the toilets and facilities rank but we stay here tomorrow night!
Next stop is a Masai village. I was in two minds about going, the US$5 "entrance fee" is pretty mercenary and the chances are that what you see will be quite touristy. On the other hand it [the visit] seemed fairly genuine, under the circumstances. I thought it was a bit odd when the four of us were taken into one guy's hut for a look see (frankly you can see sweet FA it's so dark). A rounded square hut about 4x2.5m in which he said five people lived. We haven't quite figured that one out as his mum and dad were mentioned as well as his two wives and four kids. Not to mention the pen area for the sheep and goats and anything else that needs shelter. We had a song (somewhat dischordant) with a warrior jumping thing [it wasn't quite explained]. They tried to flog us their junkets -- we all resisted -- before visiting their little school hut where the kids, all about 4-7, dutifully sang out their syllable sounds as pointed to on the blackboard. They have to learn Masai, Swahili and some English before they're sent out to tend cattle. It was funny listening to them -- they have five vowels (all very English sounding) with various prefixes and were counting to ten, or in tens to one hundred (in an even more English sounding fashion) -- as they cheerfully sang out the first four/nine [syllables] then all grunt quietly under their breath the last.
I ended by asking one of the guys how far into the valley they took their cattle. I failed to understand his answer before he went onto say how the cattle went off to the crater to drink (10-20km away?), then he was trying to teach me some Masai -- which I failed to grasp [that he was trying to teach me] -- before he mentioned Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden and his radio he used to listen to the BBC world service. I made my excuses and ran.
Down the far side of the range and into the plain. After a good while we reached the Serengeti gate. The gate is on one of the few rocky outcrops and there's a small track up to an observation point. On the rocks are these pink, purple, greeny-grey geckos, about a foot long. We didn't see any snakes, as Paul suggested we might.
Into the park and flat grassland, when you're not in a dust cloud, is all you see. We did stop for a few things: silverback jackals, giraffe, etc., and a lioness lying at the side of the road. We fought with the roof of the Landcruiser (it takes four to tango) and tried getting five to squeeze out of the top. It doesn't work! We had to bring it down again to move off, this doesn't bode well.
There were a couple more stops for zebra, a hyena with a mouthful of antelope and some ground hornbills. Alas, each time, Herman, managed to park the truck on the steepest part of the camber which meant that I could only see three metres beyond the edge of the truck [as luck would have it, all the sightings were on the other side of the truck from me]. I looked, mostly in vain, for wildlife out my side of the truck rather than twist my back out of shape.
As we sit waiting for tea the bugs are bouncing out of the lanternlight and my guts are certainly not shipshape. Not so good as Pimba Camp is a wild camp, ie. the beasties roam through during the night (so you can't just get up and go to the toilet, it's more of an adventure) and doesn't have that much water flowing through the facilities.
Pimbi Camp, Serengeti S2.42141
E34.85112 Elev. 1513m. 
Helen retired early with another migraine. When I retired I opted for a bush pee. I tested the surrounds with my torch and two pairs of eyes slunk away. Hyena, I guess.
Copyright 2002 Ian Fitchet. All rights reserved.