Things to see and do Ngorongoro Crater

All these taxes are to be paid in advance (no cash or CB at the gate), at the Barclay Bank branch in Arusha or Mwanza (the entrance town on the Lake Victoria side), or at the CRDB in these two towns and in Karatu, either in CB Visa or MasterCard, or in dollars. The bank will provide you with a receipt and a temporary "NCA smart card" to which the fees are credited, which you will need to "beep" on entering and leaving the park. For the Crater Fee Service, the card must be paged either at the Lodware Gate or at the administration office next to the Ngorongoro Crater Lodge.

North of the Ngonrogoro crater, from the museum where you can pick up a guide for this visit, you can make an interesting expedition to Nassera Rock, a large 100m high rock rising in the middle of the plains, where traces of habitat have shown that people have lived there since prehistoric times. Quite old paintings, probably Maasai, decorate the bottom of the walls. The crossing is interesting, especially between December and March, at the time of the great wildebeest migration. It is also a first choice observatory because it overlooks the plain and the wild animals which graze peacefully there. We first pass Naiborsoit ("white stones"), and after 14 km, we reach the shifting sands, a curved dune of almost 100 m long and 9 m high, formed of sand and ash from the Ol Doinyo Lengaï volcano, and which advances towards the west of about 20 m per year. We continue northwards along Longoijo ("the mountain of the fertile cattle"), Nondekien ("the mountain of the killed bird"), in memory of a plane that crashed here in the 1930s, killing two people, while two injured survivors were rescued by the Maasai. But also Olomirakini Sowaten ("the mountain of donation"), where the surrounding Maasai villages offered goats and cows to the warriors. After 16 km, after passing the Korrongo, you reach Nassera Rock. The rock can be climbed on its eastern side: the view is superb. The area is inhabited by eland and giraffe.

You can continue east into Angata Kiti for 20km and then north into Sanjan ("the treeless plain") for 24km, following the mountain on the right. As you cross the Korrongo River, you can see the Olkarie Gorge cutting into the mountain, over 150 m high. A colony of Rupell's vultures lives on the walls, as well as baboons that fight from time to time (beware of falling rocks), Verreaux's eagles and great horned owls. Maasai sometimes take their animals to drink in holes at the bottom of the gorge, a little before the natural bridge.

You can continue south to pitch your tent in a very basic Tanapa camp (you have to take everything with you) located at the edge of the conservation area which is about 1 km from the gorge, near the village of Malambo, towards Lake Natron. A very wild and remote area where few tourists venture and where it is necessary to leave well equipped, with good guides and 4x4.