Ngorongoro Crater
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Ngorongoro Conservation Area
The Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA) is actually part of the Serengeti plains to which the Maasai Mara (Kenya) also belongs to. If you drive from Arusha to the Serengeti, you will drive through the NCA.
The most famous part of the NCA is the Ngorongoro Crater. The crater is with 265km² only three percent of the total NCA. The crater is a huge caldera of a collapsed volcano, it is 23km wide and has an average depth of 600 meters. It is known to be one of the best places in Africa to watch wildlife. Which you can imagine as the crater contains over 20,000 large animals including some of Tanzania’s last remaining black rhinos. Other animals you can see are lions, elephants, buffalos, wildebeest, Thomson’s gazelles, zebras, hippos and flamingos. You will not find giraffes inside the crater, because they can not bend their legs enough to walk down the steep crater.
Close to Serengeti NP you can visit Oldupai Gorge. This river canyon cut 100 meters deep through the volcanic soils of the Serengeti Plains. It is commonly referred to as “The Cradle of Mankind”, because Oldupai Gorge is one of the most important prehistoric sites in the world and has been instrumental in furthering understanding of early human evolution.