Ngorogoro/Serengeti is a very expensive experience! Although we would never regret it, you have to plan things very carefully otherwise you end up paying so much more than what you had imagined! We got to the lodge at about 2:30. The most luxurious lodge we have ever seen - with a beautiful bath!!! Joey bathed about 3 times a day just because she could! The lodge is positioned on the edge of the crater with an amazing view of the lake shimmering with strange colours as it apparently has a very high Sodium content.

We wolfed down a fantastic lunch at the lodge and then joined an American and a British couple to go down into the crater. We really enjoyed the scenery which was beautiful and green! There were just animals everywhere you looked! We had a great sighting of a Cheetah walking in the beautiful purple and yellow flowers. The other people on the trip were super friendly, and we felt in no time like we were all good mates! The American girl was a professional fitness/strength dancer. It's a cross between body building and gymnastics. You learn to do things that show off your strength - but it looks sort of like dancing. It was all very strange - like something you would see in "America's got Talent"! Anyway - in her latest dance - her theme had been Super Woman -so that was her name for the rest of the game drive. Her slightly podgy and super confident husband, a banker in Barbados where they live, was extremely proud of her and showed us all the photos and videos! After dinner we chatted some more with them all and then headed to sleep in our fantastically large bed! The décor in the rooms was absolutely beautiful. A stunning fire place with a ready lit fire welcomed us and there was sherry on offer. We felt so completely spoilt to be there.

The next morning we thoroughly enjoyed our large breakfast and then joined 2 older ladies from New Zealand for a trip down the Crater for the day. We again were overwhelmed by the beauty of the crater - we were in the clouds at the lodge, but then as we descended into the crater we went beneath them and they cleared later. The rim to the crater floor is about a 600m difference in height. We saw six lions that day, five relaxing in the shade that the cars provided when they stopped to look at them. This has become a habit of theirs since there are no trees in the crater. As it is a volcano, the crater floor, similar to the southern Serengeti, has a very shallow soil covereing. Hardly any trees grow on the crater floor unless the rock thin as it does in a couple of places and trees can put their roots through. This also means there are no giraffe in the crater and the leopard that exist live in the dense forest escarpment of the crater. The elephants don't eat a lot of leaves obviously and learn to browse in the grass. We were lucky with visiting at the time of year we had, just after the rains, and the lake was full, the grass green (and the varieties don't grow high in the crater) and yellow and purple wild flowers everywhere.

We were looking for a rhino in the crater, a rarity in the whole area but didn't get any good sightings. They only have black rhino but very few exist due to poaching, a huge problem at all game parks. One of the most interesting things is that Ngorongoro is a Conservancy Area. It is separate from the Serengeti National Park since people can't live in the Park but they have allowed the Masai to continue their nomadic existence in the Conservancy Area. This means the Masai bring their cattle to graze on the crater floor every day, amazingly into the "lion's den" literally. But they have no fear of lions and a mutual respect protects the cattle from predators in the crater amazingly.