Ngorongoro Crater, Oldupai Gorge, Shifting Sands

This day started out at 6:30am jumping into 2 Land Cruisers and heading to the Ngorongoro Crater to do an actual tourist Safari. We drove around the rim of the Crater and then down into the thick of things! Our tour guide for the day was of course our very own Godfry, who is the Tourism Councillor for the Maasai People. He and his brother Isaya were with us almost everyday throughout our trip. There was everything imaginable in the Crater: Elephants, Giraffes, Rhinos, Hippos, Hyenas, Buffalos (poor poor buffalo), Warthogs, Monkeys, Gazelles, Zebras, and of course LIONS!!!!! We not only saw one but 13 lions all huddled together for what looked like a town hall meeting......but they were feasting on a freshly hunted down Buffalo :( It was sad to see but still crazy to actually witness it.

The interesting thing about this was that as we were driving around and looking at all the animals, they all seemed desensitized to all the tourists and just went about grazing or mulling around. It kinda seemed like going to the zoo, but we were the ones in cages. It was completely different then our other impromptu safari rides, driving in the middle of nature and seeing the animals run away because they had never seen you or were just afraid, but more importantly just seeing how they truly live in their own habitat.

It was great to experience none the less and the lions & buffalo just shows we weren't in the middle of a zoo!!

Next on the ride was the Oldupai Gorge.
This is a famous landmark as there have been many many archeological discoveries that have happened here.


After that we drove over to the famous "Shifting Sands". The Shifting Sands are famous because since 1976 this pile of sand has mysteriously shifted approx 20m per year always in the same direction and never losing shape. Unless I saw it I would never have believed it. This sand pile is HUGE and just keeps going. They believe it has something to do with magnetic forces. This is all of us doing the "Toyota Jump" - as per the Aussies in our group ;) This is about the 20th photo we took of the jump and of course my legs didn't make it on this one!