Ngorongoro crater

So the purpose of our crazy scary drive yesterday (see next blog) was spend a day in the Ngorongoro crater. I was with yet another Lion researcher and thus our day was mostly filled with searching for lions on and off road. We saw 42 lions (about half of the total crater population) and I’ve tried to spare you from more same old same old lion pictures ;) and just post the really cute ones.

This is the oldest lion alive in the crater (and older than any of the lions in the Serengeti research area). She is 18 years old and at first Dennis Ikanda (the lion researcher) though she was dying because she looks so thin. But, the entire pride was thin, they probably had not eaten in about 5 days and as long as they catch something soon she should be fine.

Here are some other pictures from the crater:

This is a picture from atop a large hill in the middle of the crater. To get there we put my car in diff lock, kept it in first gear, and drove basically straight up a 65% grade. Kind of freaky, but the view was worth it.

This is a baby Thompson’s gazelle, probably born that day. They are hiders, meaning the young lay flat down like this and do not move when there is danger. We also saw a baby wildebeest with its umbilical cord still attached trying to learn how to walk, but no picture of that one.

Here are three black rhinos, very exciting for me since I have not seen a rhino since my trip to the crater in 1999. They are rare and it was a treat to see them. Despite the fact we were off road we stayed a good distance from the rhinos (so we did not disturb them), hence their small size in the picture. However, this is better than with my 400x zoom lens picture from 1999 where the rhino is literally a dot on the horizon.
Here is a female ostrich. I realized I do not have that many (or maybe any) ostrich pictures because they are so common and usually run away so thought I better start working on my ostrich collection.