Happy Birthday to Candice!!

It was Candice's B-day when  we went to Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania.  It's a old volcano that has filled with fertile soil, and other diverse animals.  On safari in Tanzania, you are in national parks.  You see a ton of animals but you have to stay on designated roads (no off roading) so you can't get as close as we would have liked.  Here's some action shots.

After having been on safari in Southern Africa and having used open-air land rovers, I was a little skeptical about the pop-top land cruisers of east Africa.  It turns out they are perfect for that environment because of all the dusty roads you encounter.  If we would have been in open-air rovers we would have been covered.  Another cool thing is that we had our own cruiser for all our safari adventures.

The elephants in Ngorongoro are the biggest I have ever seen in any part of Africa or Asia.



The black rhino, super elusive and also very aggressive.  Our guide told us he had only seen black rhinos a few times in his whole career.  Candice felt like he showed up because it was her birthday... 
We stayed at the Ngorongoro Crater Lodge.  It's generally considered to be one of the best hotels in the world and for $2,500/night, it should be.
It was an amazing/unusual design that I have never seen before.  Elegant, Middle-Earth and Africa are all fitting adjectives to describe this sublime property.  In the picture above, you can see a rack of spears for the guests to use at their leisure, I felt right at home.  After our game drive our own private butler, Mokoi, was waiting with freshly made chocolate cookies and mocktails-how delightful!  We were then taken to our hut/dwelling thing where a warm, bubble bath with fresh rose petals was waiting for us.  It had a view that overlooked the crater-freaking decadent!!Our room had, it's own bar, 4 dozen of the most beautiful roses I've ever seen and a well-stocked chocolate box.  What more do you need?

NCL is not a fenced hotel/lodge, whenever you want to go to dinner or be outside, you must be escorted by a guard or in their case, a Masai-warrior.  I half expected him to be riding a zebra but was equally impressed when he arrived brandishing a sharpened spear.  As we left our hut, he pointed out a cape buffalo not ten feet from our door.  We had walked past it not one minute earlier and had no idea it was there.  Yes, the cape buffalo kinda looks like a cow but is actually one of the biggest killers in Africa.  One killed my dad's friend while he was hunting, unzipped him from his crotch to his throat.  Yikes!!  Several of our guides told us that the buffalo is the one animal that frightens them the most.  Very unpredictable.  So yeah, ten feet from our door...  I love experiences like that, Africa is the best!!!!!

Below is a pick of one of the dining rooms.  The ceiling is constructed of folded banana leafs.  Strange and beautiful.

Birthday din din and yes, there was a huge cake and the whole staff came and sang African birthday songs and danced.  It was wonderful, especially the way African women can shake their rumps, art in motion.

Breakfast in bed, brought to us by our dear Mokoi.

View of the crater from our room.  

The crater is really cool and a place that one should definitely go.  The crater lodge was a dream filled with personal butlers and dangerous animals lurking around every nook.  Now on to the Serengeti...