NGORONGORO CRATER

Size: 259 Square kilometers, 610 meters deep.

Location: 180 km (111 miles) North West of Arusha and lies between Lake Manyara National Park and the Serengeti National Park.

Getting here: By road from both Arusha and Dar-es-Salaam.

To do: Combine with a visit to nearby Ol Duvai Gorge, where fossil remains dating back to 1.75 million years ago or continue to the Serengeti or Lake Manyara National Parks.

Best time: Accessible year round.

Accommodation: Three lodges built around the crater with stunning views looking into the depths of the crater, a few scattered campsites within the Ngorongoro Conservation Area.

Map

Indisputably one of the true wonders of the African Continent, the Ngorongoro Crater is an extraordinary area of haunting beauty and nature, with its majestic mountain ring and pink lake shimmering in the blue grey haze 2000ft below.

The crater is home to an abundance of wildlife that is permanently resident on the crater floor of the largest intact caldera in the world. The crater's lake is home to flamingo, Rosy-breasted Longclaw and waders. The plains are host to various plains game as well as the big five.

Olduvai Gorge lies between the Ngorongoro Crater and the Serengeti National Park. The area has become famous as an archaeological site, where in 1959 Dr. Mary Leakey discovered the fossil skull of early man that lived some 1.75 million years ago. The skull can be seen in the "Hall of Man" in Dar es Salaam.

Also found at this site were the remains of a pre-historic elephant and giant-horned sheep which were painstakingly unearthed. The nearby museum, although small, explains the significance of the fossils, geology and artifacts of the gorge.