Next to the crater there is the Olduvai Gorge left from an ancient river. This is the place that Mary Leaky did her amazing discoveries of fossils and foot prints of all the early hominids, australopithecus (2.5-1.75mya), homohabilis (2-1.2mya), homoerectus (1.5-0.8 mya) and homosapiens (400,000-present). No other site has remains of four hominids. We drove down in the gorge and stood on the site of here discoveries. Each year approximately 500 archeolog...

Our guide picked us up at 8:00 a.m. with plans to visit a nearby Maasai village, the Oldupai (yes it's Oldupai not Olduvai) Gorge, the Shifting Sands and then to travel down into the Crater. It was a long and bumpy drive on a dirt road. I will leave for Jim to talk about the gorge and anthropological importance. But, after driving down into the gorge we proceeded to drive another half hour or so to see the Shifting Sands. I wasn't feeling too excited about thi...

We were picked up by Killian our full time assigned driver for our visit. He had a table set out with coffee, tea and cookies under a shade tree at the air strip. We climb in his Land Rover for an hour and half drive to the crater. The landscaped changed from the lush Rwanda to an arid California type with brown grass and sparse, small trees. The Ngorongoro Crater is a Tanzania National Park and Conversation area. The crater was formed by the collapse o...

So, Jim mentions to our pilot that he really wanted to take flying lessons... but explained that he is not a good driver and I said I would not ride in a plane with him. So, the pilot says - you don't need to be a good driver to pilot a plane - after all there is not much to bump into!! I have to admit he really did fine though the landing was a little rough!!! OMG