Safari Day 4: Ngorongoro and farewell Africa!!

For our final day of Safari we woke in the fog and mist all along the Ngorongoro crater rim. The Ngorongoro Serena Safari Lodge served up one it’s famous breakfast buffets to completely fuel us up for the day in the world’s largest inactive, intact, and unfilled volcanic caldera: the Ngorongoro.

Via our trusty LandCrusiers, we descended the 2,000 feet to the crater floor on the switch-backed road taking us well below the clouds. In the cool overcast morning, some of the animals took novel approaches to finding a warm place to rest, including a pair of lioness laying right in the middle of the road. Our photographs were from not more than six feet away – I wisely kept my window rolled up!

Just after this we were delighted to spot the extremely rare Black Rhino at some distance, thereby completing our capture (photographically, of course) of Africa’s Big Five. What a thrill!!

We once again found our lunch spot occupied by some locals. In this case, some very active big hippopotamus! No reason to argue with the most dangerous mammal in Africa over location, we found an alternative place to eat.

After lunch we headed up out of the crater and on to the Mount Meru Hotel in Arusha where our group formally concluded the Madison Mountaineering 2015 Kilimanjaro climb and African Safari.

Half the team headed to the airport for flights home while the other half are continuing their vacations with some time on the beaches of Zanzibar!

Thanks for following our adventure. This concludes our Kilimanjaro 2015 dispatches.

Why don’t you make plans to join us next year?