Pengguna Tetamu
3 September 2023
This place has two advantages, the view and the proximity to the descent road. The view is unquestionably spectacular, encompassing Ngorongoro Crater. The sky is rimmed with a rosy-pink girdle as the sun sets, and you can sit around the fire and take in the beautiful scope of the crater. The other advantage is that this camp is only 20 minutes or so from one of the two roads that descends into Ngorongoro. The gate opens at 6AM and the camp will start breakfast as early as 530AM, so you can grab a cup of coffee and some toast, be on your way, and be part of the early knot of vehicles descending into the park with the best chance to see some of the shyer animals or predators on a kill. BUT. The view is, what?, an hour or hour-and-a-half in the evening and not all that different than the view you can get from the oversight near the park entrance. The proximity to the descent road is a true advantage, but if you’re really interested in being at the gate at 6AM and want to eat anything substantial, you’ll still have to make special arrangements for an early breakfast. And the big trade-off is the cold. It is legitimately “cold,” not “chilly,” here. The altitude at camp is ~2400m (7800+’). Both nights we were there, it was very clear in late afternoon and evening, but in the night after it cools, the fog is thick. Fog for the camp equals clouds for the crater floor, which is 200m (700’) or so below. Sitting around the fire looking at the view? Everyone is under thick blankets. Dinner is served in an open-faced tent, which is unheated. My watch thermometer reported 13C (55F) at dinner. It was not colder at dawn, but 100% humidity (i.e., fog) at that temperature is, perhaps not “raw,” but legimitely cold. I wore long pants and 3 layers of long-sleeve shirt and still wrapped the blanket around me at the dining table. To be fair: the temperature is surprisingly low on the crater floor, too. I took off my outermost layer only at 930AM and my second layer at 1130AM. To help with the cold, they put water bottles in the beds. That’s fine, but the beds are singles individually made, so you can’t share body heat with your spouse. The individual tents also feature a “bush shower” fed from a 20-liter reservoir. The water flow through the shower was so poor that this was only a trickle insufficient to rinse off. It would have been better to just get a washcloth and a bucket of hot water. The staff was among the friendliest and most cheerful of any place we stayed, but they were overworked. Meals are served communally and cooked in a small kitchen. You are asked if you have any allergies, but otherwise there is no option. It seemed to us that they had two main courses: beef lasagna and fish. One night you get one, the next night you get the other. You get your food in 3 courses: soup (good!), main, and dessert. Which is fine, but you have to wait your turn for the one or two servers among 20+ other guests. Except for the staff, this was significantly less
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