Day 5 - ngorongoro crater

Once again, up at 5am. We were back in the cars and off to the crater for another early morning game drive. Our camp was at the top of the crater, and the drive down was really scary! The road was carved into the edge of the crater and was very thin. The edge of the road looked over onto a very steep drop over the crater which is really high.
When we reached the bottom and then started driving around we saw a lot of animals live in the crater. Our guide told us that it is 20km in diameter and most of the animals never leave, because it has all the water, food and shelter they need. We saw a lot of the same animals as the day before, plus some wildebeest and a rhino. We also saw the end of the great migration, where all the buffalo walk together to another area every year. There wasn't too many of them left.
We saw a female lion with blood on her face looking very tired, and Dan said she must have just killed something and eaten it. We then saw hyenas eating what looked like the lions leftovers of a buffalo. Our tour guide said it would have taken more than one lion to take down a buffalo so when we noticed the rest of the cars had stopped up ahead so went to see what they were looking at and it turned out to be three more tired lions. They were lying in the shadow of the cars so were very close. They are so much bigger than I had ever noticed! It was very scary because the roof of the cars were open and they could jump on top with no problems, but they all looked too full and tired. We had some problems driving away as the wheels were close to driving over tails and paws!
We then started the drive back to Arusha. We enjoyed the crater but after our experience the day before in the Serengeti it seemed less exciting.
We made it back to camp and headed straight to the city to buy water and snacks for the next couple days travelling to dar es sallam. We were also asked by our tour guide Pete to go into a jewell shop, and two girls bought very expensive diamonds!
We then went back to the camp and the staff had cooked us an amazing barbecue, which we washed down with some African cider. We then continued drinking and playing a game called piff paff poof with the Swedish/Norwegian drinkers from before. That was fun until we were told we had to be packed up with tents away and ready to leave at 4.30am! So at 9am I went to bed while Michael and the boys bravely continued the drinking.