Ngorongoro Crater is on every northern itinerary, costs several hundred dollars per vehicle to descend into, and by ten in the morning in August has a queue of Land Cruisers at any decent sighting. It is also somewhere we put almost every client. Both things are true.
The case against. It is busy in a way nothing else in Tanzania is. The floor is only about 260 square kilometres and every vehicle in the area is on the same handful of tracks. You are not going to have a wilderness experience here. If you have read about solitude in East Africa, this is not where you find it.
The case for. The density is genuinely unlike anywhere else. The crater walls hold a resident population in a confined space, so a single morning gets you lion, elephant, buffalo, hippo, hyena, jackal, flamingo and a realistic chance of black rhino — which is the point. There are only a few dozen rhino left in the crater and it remains one of the most reliable places on the continent to see one.
The elephants are different. The crater bulls are old, and old bulls carry tusks that most populations no longer produce because the animals carrying those genes were shot. You will not see tusks like that in the Serengeti.
How to make it better. Be at the descent road when it opens. The first ninety minutes are quiet, the light is good, and the predators are still active. By mid-morning the traffic has arrived and the cats have gone into the shade. Most itineraries have you leave a lodge at eight; ask to leave at six.
Stay on the rim. A night on the crater rim rather than down in Karatu buys you that early start and costs you an hour less driving. The rim in the evening, with cloud pouring over the lip, is worth it independently.
The verdict. Go, go early, go once. A single well-timed morning is the right amount of crater. Two days here would be a waste of a week that could include the Serengeti.
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