Wednesday, July 15

Ngorongoro Crater

We spent the whole day down in the crater today. In the morning we saw a huge herd of zebras. The young have brown and white stripes. The brown turns to black as they mature. Several pairs of zebras spent quite some time social grooming. They would start at the head end with both licking and biting at each others' necks and then work their way down to the rear ends.
	At one point we drove into the middle of hundreds of zebras and wildebeest. It is an amazing experience to be so close to so many beautiful animals and watch them carry on with their lives as if we weren't there. With the car's engine turned off you can hear the grunting calls of the wildebeest and the galloping feet of some of the zebras. Several zebras waded through a nearby pond, taking drinks of water as they walked on through.
We ate our lunch near a small lake watching a dozen hippos' eyes appear and disappear before us. In the distance we spotted a lone black rhino. As we ate Black Kites buzzed by trying to steal some chicken or a roll if we left our meal unattended. We discovered a small, dead snake in the grass near where we had been eating. It appeared to be a young black mamba. And to think we'd just been walking in that grass on our way to the lake to get a closer look at the hippos. If it was a young black mamba there were probably others nearby!	The Maasai are allowed to let their cattle graze in the crater since the land had been theirs. We saw many groups of four or five young men wearing red capes and carrying spears and sticks leading their cattle to water. The sounds of the bells on the cattle and the whistles of the young men could frequently be heard.