The giraffes stared down at us. We stared up at them. Animals that had seemed gentle and almost comic from a vehicle were much more imposing when viewed from on foot. One became agitated by our presence so we retreated back to the cover of the trees lining the gorge. “Take care”, urged Taletien, suggesting we grasp the tough sisal leaves – oldupai in Maasai – as support ropes while we descended the riverbank. But as I jumped the last foot down to the fine black sand I caught the edge of my palm on a leaf tip. Blood welled up. Taletien inspected the prick: “Let me show you some Maasai medicine”. With his knife he chopped down an oldupai leaf. He twisted it so that its greenish soapy-smelling liquid dripped onto the cut. This, he explained, was a local (in both senses of the word) anaesthetic. But he still recommended a wash and a plaster once we left the gorge.

The gorge in question was, of course, Olduvai (or Oldupai) Gorge, one of the most famous paleoarchaeological sites in the world. Unlike Louis and Mary Leakey we were not searching for the remains of Pleistocene hominids; we were merely taking a breather between the two big finales of our safari, the Serengeti and Ngorongoro Crater. But we were already in the World Heritage Site: the Ngorongoro Conservation Area extends far beyond the crater itself. In the north-west it abuts the Serengeti National Park itself, then stretches south to Lake Eyasi. The Olduvai Gorge runs east-west between Lake Ndutu and the Crater. And further craters – Olmot and Embagai – can be found north of Ngorongoro. The Conservation Area is pretty big. We had planned to explore more of it; hikes up Mount Makarot or down into Embagai Crater had been discussed and discarded. But we did see three separate elements:

1. The short-grass plains around Lake Ndutu, a complementary extension of the Serengeti ecosystem, thick with herbivores (and their predators). A jaunt down to the lake prior to entering the National Park revealed untold numbers of hinnying zebras, bouncing Thompson’s gazelles and plodding wildebeest, complete with fuzzy, wobbly-legged young. All the apex predators we saw (lions and a solitary cheetah) could afford to doze in the shade, so abundant was their food supply.
2. The Olduvai Gorge area, interacting with the Maasai communities that live there. We visited one of the local villages to meet the tribespeople (an experience that we found rather exploitative – of us, rather than the Maasai)
3. Ngorongoro crater itself. This truly is a Lost World experience, a clearly defined caldera within which nature roams wild. Entrance and exit are via roads built into vertiginous slopes. Inside, most of the animals we had grown to know and love over the previous week were present and correct: zebra, gazelles and wildebeest; elephants and hippos; lions and hyenas; baboons in the Lerai forest. The crater is also the prime location for spotting black rhino in northern Tanzania (there are some in the Serengeti, but scattered across the more remote northern parts). The black rhinos at Ngorongoro are resident year round and our guide made it his priority to find them for us.

So what makes Ngorongoro different to the Serengeti? Well, both of them are inscribed on Criteria vii (with reference to the great migration) and x (with reference to the density of wildlife). But Ngorongoro is also listed under Criteria viii (with reference to the world’s largest unsubmerged caldera), ix (with reference to the variety of habitats in the NCA) and – since 2010 – iv (with reference to the “exceptionally long sequence of crucial evidence related to human evolution” – though the Unesco website does note that “the interpretation of many of the assemblages of Olduvai Gorge is still debatable”!).  So the real differences in the eyes of Unesco are the remarkable caldera landforms and paleoarchaeological aspect.

I would argue that one other prime difference is that the Conservation Area is still inhabited. Residents have not been relocated to make way for a National Park. It’s a difficult balancing act. Returning from the Serengeti it was a shock to see such evidence of human activity: a gleaming mass of animal life revealed itself to be a herd of cattle, women toted water along the road, thorny-walled bomas were dotted hither and yon across the landscape. Conflict between man and animal is, perhaps, inevitable but for now coexistence seems to be holding.

 

World Heritage-iness: 3.5

My Experience: 4

(Visited Feb 2015)