Crater Tourism

22th February - 24st February 2010 – Days 147-149 – Karatu and the Ngorongoro Crater, Tanzania

The long bus ride to Karatu started confidently with the driver not being sure where he was supposed to be driving. This came about as only minutes before the bus started to move he ushered us out of the bus in a slight panic saying that the bus would not be going to our destination despite us having been instructed so by another member of staff outside, then changing his mind after some heated conversations with his co-driver and the said member of staff outside and ushering us back onto the bus. Whether the driver was given instructions on the last minute in a yellow envelope or not, it was still a rather amazing race to Karatu. During the course of the 15 hours that followed, we were supplied with a Die Hard movies marathon dubbed in French, introduced to new plum-like fruits Freda picked up from some street vendors, driven past Kilimanjaro without any of us noticing as the volcano lay deep inside the mist (as it often does), made to wait at Arusha bus station for more than an hour for the bus to fill up again – and made to listen to the repeated sour comments of a woman from the UK on the bus about how nothing works in Africa – and tactfully overcharged five-fold for using the public toilet at the same station. We finally arrived at Karatu around 8pm after a couple more interesting pieces of entertainment, namely recreational movies about the stone age and the life in the South American jungle during the Inca rule.

After such an eventful ride Freda declared that he could really do with a beer. All we wanted to do was to find a place for the night quickly enough so that we could move on to this preferred pastime, but Freda was a step ahead and lead us to a streetside bar which, it happily turned out, had a guest house right around the corner and also served food. Better yet, there was a driver-guide hanging around at the guest house who agreed to take us to the Ngorongoro Crater the next morning. Bingo! We all got our beer and Freda got his first taste of ugali with nyama choma (charcoal grilled meat) and his first squat toilet experience of the trip before turning in at a decent hour.

As if we hadn't had enough of early mornings lately, we again had to get up before sunrise if we were to get down into the crater during the better wildlife viewing hours of the morning. So we met up with our driver-guide and yawned a request for a stop at the ATM and at the shop to get some drinks on the way. At the gate I showed my full morning personality to the park staff and to our poor guide when shocked and appalled at how the park didn't accept payment in anything but US dollars, thus draining our stock nearly empty after only being replenished a couple of days ago by Freda who brought us some with him. My anger was quickly smoothed out, however, when finally inside the conservation area we were met with one of the most rewarding, if not the most rewarding, views of the trip so far: misty thin layers of cloud floating over the crater seen from an opening on the rim. The crater lake below was so still it looked like a piece of matte mirror glass in the weak morning sun. We gawked for a while, snapped enough photos to make continuous wallpaper out of the frames and eventually climbed back into the car for the descent into the crater and some more beautiful views along the way down. Freda also engaged in some trade with the local Maasai herders selling their crafts while me and T were trying to make educated guesses about whether real ivory could be as light as the one in the necklaces sold by these Maasai claiming it as ivory. The outcome of this discussion is obviously rather pointless as both options would not be very good.

We spent a good while down in the crater spotting the abundant wildlife and giving a good workout to our cameras, me cursing T for leaving the memory card inside the laptop at the hotel on a day like this as I was deleting pictures in order to take new ones within the rotation of 20 photos that could be fitted onto the camera's own memory. We saw the grand list of zebras, buffaloes, Thomson's gazelles, wildebeest, hartebeest, hippos, elephants, rhinos, a waterbuck, a cheetah and some lions – the only male we saw was sleeping inside such a thick bush that he was barely identifiable as a lion by his tail which could be seen waggling gently around. Also on the long list were the birds, as always. Flamingos, secretary bird, kori bustard, egrets... As a reward for our guide, we had bought some mandazi (local breakfast doughnuts), bananas and soft drinks. Never mind that he was probably used to an actual lunch box which were sold at Karatu town at such extortionate prices that we had swiftly turned away from the seller in the previous night and decided to apply our own picnic tactics. We did feel slightly bad about this so we decided to get our guy some dinner in town later to compensate. On the drive back into town we stopped at a craft shop so that Freda and I could have a look at some mzungu-priced souvenirs and, thanks to Freda's initiative, at a local brick factory just out of curiosity towards the local way of life. The workers kindly explained to us their manufacturing routines and showed us the piles of hundreds of bricks they push out on a daily basis as a result of pure manual labour. Another one of those moments when you start to wonder how many bricks an average western worker would produce manually these days if put to the task. T kicked back by pooping out already before we even got out of the gates and continuing on that path until we reached town.

Back in Karatu we indeed held onto our promise of taking our guide out for dinner and a beer. We were joined by Franco, a friendly chap that we had met on the previous night at the bar and who had introduced us to the guest house next door. Contrary to mine and T's hardened expectations, Franco didn't order any food for himself but just had a beer while the rest of us scooped up some hefty plates. Our guide respectfully had his dinner and a beer and made his excuses, wishing us a good journey on and requesting that we mention to our friends about his services. Franco stayed behind to keep us company and hit us back as the night went on and the rounds of beer flowed to our table, in that he ordered one for himself on our tab on each of those. After some time Fredas' friendly and welcoming smile encouraged one of the waitresses to ask if she could have a drink with us as well, so we got her a round which she came and joined us for whenever she had a quieter spot in between her work. Later we got her another. When Franco was about to pass out at the table and I had already done so to some extent, I decided to call it a day and left the guys to it. The next morning I was sharing the room with two sleepyheads who had apparently had some kind of manly heart-to-heart about the prospects of a western guy attracting local ladies' attention if money was not involved, on which I was asked for my opinion as well. Somehow this had become a topic of debate over the course of the night.

The boys had not at least embarked on any larger festivities so we were all in the state to go wander around Karatu town in the daylight as well. Not that there is all that much to explore. Karatu has one main road, the highway up from Arusha that continues through Ngorongoro and Serengeti towards Mwanza. There is also a parallel street to the main road, and anything important in the town is situated mostly between and around these streets. Karatu has a small but cheerful selection of bars and restaurants, and you'll find a cheap guest house or two by the main road but otherwise the place really does not have that much to offer. As it is close to Ngorongoro crater, there are many lodges and campsites slightly outside of town, but we were happier staying in Karatu town as it does have that kind of dusty town character not spoilt by the fact that it is the last town before two major tourist attractions on a continental scale. We then strolled up and down the main street, concluded we had seen most of it and sat down for some more nyama choma for lunch, an early afternoon beer and a further debate over how one should relate to the locals – now that we had a fresh face coming from outside our four month viewing goggles we got yet another person's insights to this traditional opinion-divider. A bit later on our guide from the day before took us to see an old Nokia tyre that had been lying in someone's open courtyard gathering dust and rust for quite a while. He came to think of this as the day before this we had told him about how Nokia started off making all kinds of stuff, car tyres being one of them, and he remembered that they might have some. There it was, a gigantic old tractor tyre – made by Nokia.

As the activities and attractions in Karatu slowly but surely started running out, we thought best to try and get back to Arusha the same night still as this would give us more leeway on our schedule of getting back towards Dar es Salaam. So we headed to the bus station, agreed on a dalla-dalla to take us, grabbed our bags and hopped in. We shared the merry ride with a total of 22 passengers in the dalla-dalla at times, as is consistent with the small town atmosphere.


p.s. - Apologies for the lack of pictures -disappearance of the camera - Freda, get on with sending them!!!