Ngorogoro Crater, Tanzania- by Anna

The Ngorogoro Crater was such a beautiful and unique experience. Our drive out to the crater took about three hours. When we entered the national park, we drove all the way up the sides of the crater. The road leading up was surrounded by forests and Baboons. The Baboons were crossing the road at randomly times so we stopped quite suddenly a couple times. The view from the top was beautiful even though there was fog. As we started our descent, we realized that it felt warmer inside the crater. Millions and millions of years ago, the crater was a volcano. The volcano collapsed and is now home to many different species of animals including the Big 5. The Big 5 are known as the five hardest animals to kill on foot. They are the lion, leopard, buffalo, rhino and the African elephant. It was an amazing day. We saw lions, buffalo, elephants, hippos, two white rhinos (from a far distance), tonnes of Impala (a type of deer) and lots of birds. At one point we watched an elephant walk up to a sleeping lion and the lion jumped up and ran away but the elephant charged after him. So much for the King of the jungle! After lunch, we kept driving around and finding more animals. The hippos were so fun to watch because every once in a while, a baby would try to climb on top of his mom. But the sad thing is that we found a dead baby hippo near the edge of the pond. A neat thing about the hippos is that they don’t swim they just walk through the water. At the end of the day we made our way back up to the top of the crater. The same question kept going through our heads. How did the animals get into the crater?