Ngorongoro Crater National Park

Ngorongoro park is a UNESCO World Heritage Site known as the Eden of Africa. It is on a massive scale. As he did yesterday, Peter was on and off a walkie talkie getting intel from other drivers on where the action was. We started at a look-out spot before driving all over the park in the hunt for big game.

I love how the fence includes a shield pattern. Here we all are, cleaner than on the mountain, with our intrepid leader.

Ciaran did these 360 photos of us with everything around us but I don't seem to have any. Here is my version of a 360 photo:

Our first stop was a Maasai village, visible in the centre of this photo. From what I just read on Wiki, the pastoralist Maasai were displaced when a dozen or so national parks were created in Kenya and Tanzania. Which might explain why this village felt a bit like a Disney attraction – very well set up for tourists. My guess is the village was allowed to stay in exchange for suffering busloads of tourists coming through. We each paid a $10 entry fee and, after touring the school and the huts, were pressured to buy trinkets from a stall in front of each hut. I told my guide that I had used the last of my cash for the entry fee (true). He said I could borrow from the driver and go to an ATM on the way back to Moshi.

It is sad to see a proud tribe like the Maasai reduced to trinket hawkers. When I was a kid, on the way to the Jersey shore, we stopped at a tent where native Americans sold trinkets. Similar vibe. Here are the women who sang to us as we entered the compound. The song was gorgeous.

We were dressed in similar garb and sang with them, sort of. Here's Lou (Louise).

And Ciaran was renamed St. Patrick.

to be continued