My alarm sounded off at the appointed time, 0530, to wake me for our day in the Crater. The gate opens at 0600 and we have to check out of the Conservation area by roughly 1400, so to maximize our time we were trying to be there bright and early.
It was wet, cold and dark. The campsite is at 2400m, on the rim of the crater (actually caldera, but that isn’t what everyone calls it) and is notorious for inclement conditions. This was certainly true this morning.
Only 3° south of the equator, I donned my long underwear, wool hat, and down jacket to get up to break camp in the mist. It was that sort of mist is wet enough to be rain, but floats in the air and permeates everything without the decency to just fall to the ground like actual rain.
Jenny and I had tried the night before to make preparations for a quick getaway. Normally it’s just coffee, tea and go, but since a herd of buffalo chased us into the tent early last night we had a few more things to sort out. During that time the first safari car coming to pick up some other campers blew by us on the dirt road, throwing a bunch of dust and exhaust our way, or so I thought. It smelled awful, and I cursed him for driving too fast. The smell didn’t clear though. In fact it got worse, and I started to think that someone was trying to start a fire in the wet conditions and the breeze was blowing their smoke to us. The smoke was getting trapped in an eddy of air behind the car and we were coughing and cursing and wondering what was going on.
After just a minute it dawned on me that, against all odds, that the smell could be coming from us. It was early and I suppose I should have come to this conclusion a minute or two sooner, but I didn’t. Not being able to think of any other source other than us we scanned the car for the source of that acrid electrical fire smell. Fridge – okay. Lights in the canopy – not working. Uh oh. I popped the hood and sure enough, flames.
Fuck.
Fortunately exposing the fire to the inclement elements extinguished it for us. We secured everything that draws power and took stock. It was a shorted wire against the second battery bracket. No doubt this was a gift from the cursed Serengeti to Ngorongoro road, the gift that keeps on giving. The plastic chafe guard and insulation were no match for those corrugations and the terrific vibrations had chaffed them through. It appeared to have burnt and melted the wires for the lighting circuit and second battery charging circuit.
Now what to do? It’s dark, wet, and the clock is ticking on the most expensive day of the entire trip. Uncertain of the full extent of the damage we considered if we’d have to bag it, go to the gate and asking for a refund on our $250 crater decent fee and leaving for Arusha. It was clear from the night before that there was a chink in our armor and we were indeed travel weary. Though we like to think we are hearty travelers there seemed to be a limit. It snuck up on us, the only occasional showering out of a plastic water bottle, the dirty clothes, the bush camping and wildlife encounters, the dust and the dirt and the grit and early mornings were finally catching up to us.
Tired and frustrated, we were thinking last nights hostage by buffalo situation was the last of our surprises and we were in the clear. And now this. Afterwards we see that it was not as bad as it seemed, but in that moment, before coffee, it was a lot to take in, all the while the clock ticking on our expensive crater visit.
Really though there wasn’t much we could do now about the wiring anyway, so we decided to make the effort for damage control and to get to the crater and enjoy it. It took us about an hour to unhook the charging system for the spare battery, taking our time to make sure all the wires were secure and we weren’t going to drain the starting battery but accidentally leaving something hooked up. By this time we had begun to appreciate a little bit of the humor of all our twists and turns these last few days, with our fingers crossed that there were no more surprises in store for us, we pronounced ourselves ready and got underway for the Crater.
During all this a guy came by and asked if we were the ones who had arranged to meet a guide at 0600 at the gate. Yes, we were, but we explained that obviously we were having some car trouble, but we would be there. He understood, no problem, and gave us instructions on where the guide would be on the side of the road. Sure enough, our guide popped out of the mist half way along the road to the gate, ready to go.
Our guide, Bahati (luck in Swahili), was great. A degree in tourism with numerous guide certifications for walking safaris, Ngorongoro specifically and other impressive qualifications. Technically a guide is “free”, but you’re expected to tip him at the end of the day what you think his services are worth. An arrangement I dislike, but Bahati turned out be great and it was good we had him with us.
We made it to the gate a bit after 7 o’clock, not bad considering the rough start. There was a host of vehicles at the gate and we thought we were in for a wait, but they checked our paperwork right away and we were off, no problems.
The Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA) lies adjacent to the Serengeti National Park, but is administered by the Masai community based organization, the Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority (NCAA). The conservation area is huge, 8,292 square kilometers, but the star attraction, the Crater, is a small fraction of that. Park entry fees are steep, detailed in the logistics section at the bottom. It is an incredible place, and one of the few areas where traditional communities, the Masai, coexist with such dense amounts of wildlife. Masai are caring for their livestock in proximity to predators as well as huge amounts of wild grazers, such as wildebeest and zebra, that also compete for grass and water resources.
The Crater is the world’s largest inactive, intact and unfilled volcanic caldera (technically a crater is formed by a meteor impact, a caldera from a volcano, but regardless the NCAA and all literature refers to this as the Ngorongoro Crater). The crater floor is something like 260 square kilometers. Inside the crater is an incredibly dense population of wildlife which is non migratory and supported by the crater ecosystem year round. These animals are not trapped, there is no fence, but the surrounding landscape is not as hospitable as the crater floor, and that combined with the steep ascent required to leave the crater encourages the majority of animals to never leave, generation after generation.
There are only three roads into or out of the crater, and interestingly Bahati told us that these are in fact old elephant paths that have been turned into roads. Elephants are not particularly good climbers, so they are deft at finding an easy grade for such ascents or descents, and thus it also makes a good route for vehicles. We have also read that many roads in Africa are in fact old elephant “highways”, or routes favored by them that have since been turned into roads.
The Serengeti and the NCA are awash not only in animals, but also politics. To give you just a small taste, many Masai communities were forcibly relocated from the Serengeti to the Ngorongoro area in 1959 for the formation of the Serengeti National Park. Now again in 2009 there are new restrictions on the Masai settlement and use of the crater, to make way for greater conservation and, of course, more luxury tourism.
Bahati’s father, who was born in the crater, had an interesting observation. Before all of the conservationists arrived there were hundreds of black rhino living on the crater floor. After the Masai were relocated from the crater floor and the conservationists have a greater presence and authority there are now less rhino than ever before. Of course correlation is not causation, but given that this is the perspective of some of the community you can easily see that the land use and conservation issues are complex.
If case you’re feeling bad that the Masai were displaced so that rich white people can look at lions, don’t forget that the Masai are not from the region, depending on how you look at it. They migrated from the north in the 17th and 18th century and in the process forcibly displaced the previous residents. If you are interested complex politics and moral conundrums you need look no further than Africa. No doubt my very brief summary has left out a host of important nuances and details, but I hope it serves to illustrate some of the complexities.
The decent road into the crater is steep and unpaved. There was a parade of safari vehicles slowly creeping down the road. I put the cruiser in low range and let the engine do the work and tried to settle down from our exciting morning. The crater was shrouded in mist and clouds, so the view was not nearly as good as the day before, but it seemed likely that it would burn off later in the morning. Even part way down the crater decent road were were treated to wonderful views of herds of buffalo and wildebeest, with gazelle and zebra mixed in. Further down and you can pick out jackals and a few of the 600 or so spotted hyena that live in the crater.
Once we got to the bottom the safari vehicles start to disperse on the various tracks. The crater floor is primarily short grass plains, in contrast to the long grasses of most of the Serengeti. This means that spotting wildlife is easy, as most of the grass is no more than 12 inches high. Apparently the short grass plains are volcanic in nature and the soil is either too dense or too shallow for the roots of the longer grasses to take hold.
The crater floor is almost flat, but also has a salt lake, a smaller fresh water lake, springs, swamps, and forest lands. The forest lands are primarily fever trees, also known as the yellow barked acacia, but also numerous kinds of fig and other smaller trees.
We made our way around the crater stopping for various sightings. Of course seeing something really special is possible, predators hunting and with so many animals in close proximity interesting interactions between groups. However really what is unique about the crater is the setting itself, a sort of wildlife Shangri-La of Africa. Coming from the volcanic plains and the crater rim descending down to the crater floor has an almost magical feeling. The wind eases, it gets warmer and wildlife abounds in every direction you see.
As the weather started to burn off we were treated to sun dappled views of the plains, alternate highlights and shadows of the sun and clouds picking out elephant and buffalo and others in the bright spotlight of the sun and it’s all sort of surreal. We saw numerous lions, some with cubs. Big tusker elephants, large herds of buffalo, wildebeest, a smattering of impala and grant’s and thompson’s gazelle, black backed jackals, but sadly no rhino sightings.
Our time nearly up we drove our way to the ascent road. Of the three roads into the crater one is dirt, descent only, one is paved, ascent only and the last is two way, but seasonal and at your own risk. We gather it’s a bit rough and elected for the paved ascent. We dropped Bahati off at the ranger post and headed to the gate, hoping we’d be able to make it before 1357, when we would incur a second day of park fees.
I drove a bit quicker than I’d prefer, but no doubt slower than the professional safari guides drive, and we made it to the gate with only five minutes to spare. The woman who checked us out didn’t seem to care at all that we’d used our one hour grace period, so we were actually in the park for almost 25 hrs, instead of 24. Relieved and really starting to relax a bit we had a quick lunch in the parking lot at the gate.
Then it was back onto tarmac for the first time in a while. The road is excellent quality all the way to Arusha and we savored the magic carpet feeling of sailing along smooth pavement. We had been told it’s a 3 hr drive to Arusha, so we assumed it’d be 4 hrs for us, but for once we kept up and made it to town in 3 hrs easily without pushing at all.
After all my whining I will confirm what you have already suspected, that we are not in fact Africa Bad Asses, but in fact Africa Wimps. A couple weeks of camping in the bush, some corrugated roads and a bit of car trouble and we’re ready to tap out (not really). I suppose maybe we’re not quite as robust as we thought, but we’re okay with wimp status, and feel great to be making the trip and to have seen all the amazing things that Africa has offered up to us so far. With that in mind, even though there are a few places to camp near town, this time we pulled the ripcord and made our way to a hotel. The cruiser was due for it’s 10,000km service and we were exhausted. It was time for a hot shower, not cooking and sleeping in.
Now allow me to introduce you to Jane and Henry. It’s us, Jenny and Andrew. We have found a peculiarity of native Swahili language speakers is that unless we make a specific effort to annunciate our names very clearly often they hear Jenny and Andrew as Jane and Henry.
“What is your name?”
“Hello, my name is Andrew”
“Pleased to meet you Henry!”
I’ve had this interaction many times now, and Jenny and I find it funny every time. A similar thing happens when Jenny introduces herself, and really we must get better at making an effort at annunciating clearly. Regardless, it’s puts a smile on our faces when it happens, so make sure if you are imagining our interactions across Tanzania and Kenya to keep in mind that often we are Henry and Jane.
This was the same when I worked in Kenya years ago, and one of our driver’s explained it to me like this:
“Yes, to us it sounds the same, Andrew and Henry, just like to you Muhammad and Mohammad sound similar but are actually quite different.”
Well, he had me there, I did struggle with all the variations of Mohammad, but fortunately they were tolerant of me blundering through Mohammad, Muhammad, Mahmoud, Mohammed, Muhammed, and so on. You should have seen the org chart for our Somali project, a staff of 200 and half of them named some variant of Mohammed, the head of HR in Nairobi worked miracles to keep them all straight.
In Arusha we settled on the Karama Lodge just out of town, right near one of the camping options, Masai Camp. Karama is perched on a hillside with views of Mount Meru and in the distance on a clear day the snow capped peak of Kilimanjaro. We could just make out some snowy slopes in the clouds when we arrived.
Even then our frustrations of travel were not done, for there was a mix up with the bill and the supposed hot shower failed to materialize. These are regular trivial trials when traveling, but we were trying to check out of the routine small challenges of African travel by getting a decent hotel, that night we went to bed tired and weary and hoping to start the next day on a new note.
And so we did. First stop was Toyota. I’m normally not a big fan of dealers, often overpriced, but in an unfamiliar city with no local knowledge of the good mechanic and not wanting to be delayed we figured it was best. We asked for a 10,000km service and gave them a laundry list of questions, a rattle here, a problem there, and of course the cooked wiring. They spent the morning inspecting the Cruiser and came up with an estimate.
I had to sit down, it was a lot. We knew that it was going to be a lot, but wow Tanzania was turning out to be expensive country on our tour. Of course it’s a Land Cruiser, it’s not a vehicle you just drive to church on Sundays, it’s been used and abused, and let’s face it, as a former rental it probably wasn’t babied.
The butcher’s bill is as follows:
-10,000km service, essentially oil change, fuel filter, oil filter, inspection.
-Front brake pads, resurface front brake rotors.
-New front wheel bearings. One was going but we had them do both.
-New rear shocks. We had suspected the left rear shock for some time, and the right one was leaking after the Serengeti-Ngorongoro road.
-Radius/stabilizer arm bushes. Totally gone. Another casualty of the road? I’m sure they were finished after our recent torture, but I’m not sure they’ve ever been replaced, so this is not shocking. Toyota says to expect approximately 80,000km out of a set.
-New steering tie rod ends and bushes.
-New bushes means alignment needed to be done.
-New air con evaporator and refrigerant gas charge – Aaaahhh!…so expensive. I wonder if a smaller shop would have tried to repair instead of replaces this? It was cracked where the piping comes out of the housing. No air con in Africa has it’s limits. It actually hasn’t been too hot, but keeping the windows down has exposed us to the ravages of tsetse flies and everything is covered in a fine dust that gets in your hair, on your clothes, and you can feel in your teeth. I’d say yuck, but I think this is a standard day for Land Rover owners? Ha!
-Second battery electrical repair.
-Exhaust mounting brackets were cracked and needed replacing.
The total bill came to almost $2500 USD. Gulp. I suppose if we were on an extended trip we might have approached it differently, maybe dong the wiring ourselves and try to look for a cheaper shop, but we didn’t have the luxury of time on this trip. There is also of course the worry of counterfeit Toyota parts, common around here, though I’m not sure how much, if you go to another shop. I think some of this, particularly the bushes, was probably already due and we should have done before the trip, but still it was sickening to do all at once.
Just as finally going to the doctor about a nagging issue brings a certain psychological relief, it felt good to get the Cruiser looked at by professionals and have a real once over. We will be confident that she will continue to serve us well for some time to come.
Jenny worries about me because I constantly worry about the cruiser. My regular job is working on a ship and I spend a lot of my time worrying about the weather, the condition of the vessel and so on, and now here we are on vacation and I have traded my ship worries for Cruiser worries.
Karama Lodge ended up not being so bad, but not exactly being the break we hoped so we traded into a hotel in town. The cruiser took a couple days, so for the first time in a long time we find ourselves with a bit of time to catch up on emails, to read properly, to be bored. It was magnificent.
One develops a close relationship with your vehicle when traveling overland. It is our home in camp, our refuge at times, our transport across part of a continent. We put all our faith in this vehicle to carry us half way across a continent and back, and each tiny detail about the car becomes familiar. The sticky door handle, the rattling latch on the canopy, the streaks the wiper blades leave on the windscreen. Did it take an extra second to start this morning? Did the clutch slip a bit in first gear? Was that rattle there before? Every small noise and change of tone becomes significant. Partially because we have found ourselves with a great fondness for this capable machine that carries anywhere we want to go, but also because the next new noise could be the foreshadowing of what strands us in the bush or by the side of the road. With that in mind we are fine with spending some time to make sure all is right. We put our faith and trust in her so she will take care of us, a bit of time and money to ensure this is not unexpected.
Oh yeah, and Toyota only accepts cash, so there’s that. ATMs in Tanzania, if you’re lucky, will disperse 400,000 shillings, $180 USD. Sometimes only half that. This is in 10,000 shilling notes, the equivalent of about $4 US dollars. So what ensued is a ridiculous parade of us going all over town pulling out huge stacks of shillings to pay our huge Toyota bill it what is essentially $4 dollar bills. I can’t believe they don’t take a credit card, but that is the way it is, and I suppose at least there were ATMs, I’m sure in some places or not so long ago that would not be possible. This also meant that we were wandering around Arusha with quite a lot of cash in our pockets, even though we did do this is stages, it was a little uncomfortable to be carrying that much cash around.
Eventually we stockpiled the cash and Toyota finished with the Cruiser. After the bill was totaled you take the final invoice to a cashier cage and an old lady meticulously hand counted our big stack of bills, as tall as a pint glass. With her approval of our payment they gave us the keys and we were off.
Driving away from the workshop the Honey Badger felt great. The alignment was done and the wheel was straight for the first time (I know, we should have done it before), the steering felt sharp, or sharp for a land cruiser anyway, and the brakes snappy. We took her off road a few days later and the suspension was also improved with the new shocks, so we were feeling new confidence in the already capable car.
Setting forth from Arusha we will be starting on a new portion of the trip. Headed south, most, but not all, of the bush time is behind us. We’ll be focusing on getting back to where Jenny and I are most comfortable, the water. Lake Malawi, the coast of Mozambique, and still a few visits to some parks along the way.
Our original plan had been to head to the coast of Tanzania and work south, to the little visited parts of south east Tanzania. I was keen on seeing Kilwa, an out of the way UNESCO site and old trading port. The traditional fishing and trading vessels are also interesting to me and we like being on the coast. From there we planned to take the Ruvuma ferry across into Northern Mozambique, to go to Quirimbas National Park, to Pemba and Ille de Mozambique.
Mozambique had different plans for us. The Sate department has issued a no go warning for US citizens in the northern province due to security issues. Some group attacking local citizens, beheadings and burning some villages, displaced people. We had the luck of running into the British Vice Counsel for Tanzania in the Serengeti and we briefly discussed our plans with her. She reasonably advised not going, pointing out that even though it’s unlikely that tourists would be targeted, the inevitable police and military road blocks this sort of situation creates and the potential for curfews and other restrictions on movement could be a pain, at the very least. Good point.
It is off to Malawi instead. We have spent more time up here in the northern part of our trip than originally planned, and in order to avoid a constant brisk pace for the whole return trip we decided to make some big jumps south so we could relax a bit when we were closer to South Africa. With that in mind the plan is to spend a couple days in Tarangire National Park and then beeline it for Malawi.
After our four night stay we had our fill of hot showers and lounging in Arusha, we were feeling refreshed and ready to get back on the road. The Land Cruiser is it’s own kind of refuge for us, the hum of the tires on the road and the grumble of the diesel engine have become comforting. It reminds me of being on watch at sea, where even at sedate speeds the hours and days add up, and in time one can cross an ocean. It’s time to point the Cruiser south, watch Africa pass by and make our way across countries.
Logistical Notes:
NCAA fees – Entry is for a 24 hour period from whenever you sign in. In USD we paid just under 600 dollars including taxes and an extra 1.5% for using a Visa card. I think the breakdown for this was 50/pp park entry, 40 vehicle entry fee, 30/pp camping (public campsite), 250 crater decent fee, 18% VAT + 1.5% credit card surcharge. As stated above, that gets you 24 hours, if you over stay or want to stay longer you’d have to pay everything, except the crater decent fee, again. Also the 40 dollars for vehicle entry was again for under 2000kgs, he just didn’t ask when I said we were self driving. You get one hour grace period on your 24 hrs. We paid by Visa at the Naabi Hill Gate, very easy.
NCAA Guide Requirement – Per NCAA rules a guide is required to enter the crater. However it did seem there was some wiggle room on this and it’s not clear if they would refuse you at the gate. One exception to this is if you don’t have seating, they said they wouldn’t turn someone away for that. The ranger we talked to said they’d had problems with self drivers breaking the rules and thus the requirement for a guide, but who knows if this is the whole story. That said, I would hope that any self drivers that do make it to the crater without a guide be on their best behavior, to reflect positively on future self drivers.
Drive time from Lodware gate to Arusha is just a bit under 3 hrs, depending on traffic.
Toyota Arusha did very generously accommodate our schedule with no appointment and we felt gave us great service. The branch manager also gave us a discount on most of the parts and labor, except of course the most expensive part. I suspect this is because he didn’t have it in stock and had to buy it from someone else in town. He also asked if we had fueled in Seronera, as he said the fuel quality there is poor. We did, and he said it’s a good thing we have a 4.2 and not a 200 Land Cruiser or a Pajero, as then “you would have trouble.” Whatever that means. Anyway, perhaps if you do plan of fueling in Seronera make sure you have a spare fuel filter handy, just in case.
We managed to get our CADAC gas bottles filled at Manji’s gas, right on the Main Street near the clock tower, adjacent to the Puma station. You have to pay full price for whatever size bottle it is, regardless of whether it’s partially full or not, and wait till the following morning. According to a comment on iOverlander you can get it the same day if you first go to the retail location that I mention and then drive the bottles yourself to the depot out of town. Cost for two 3kg bottles was 35,000 shillings. Not cheap, but cheaper than buying new bottles.
