Ngorongoro still inspires awe, they find after 38-year absence

..

CONTENTED LION: Seated by a meal, a lion rests on the roadway as tourists in a Land Rover aim their camera.

PLAYFUL: A pair of zebras horse around at the Ngorongoro crater.

This largest crater in the world - the caldera of an extinct volcano in northern Tanzania - was created millions of years ago by a mighty convulsion that erupted deep in the earth. It left a great gash in the planet's crust - the Rift Valley, which cuts across Africa from the Red Sea to Malawi and gave birth to Ngorongoro and a series of other lesser volcanos on this vast, central African plateau. Ngorongoro's crater, a huge expanse of gold and green meadow, is 32 miles across and enclosed by steep walls 2,000 feet high. A shallow lake, a few ponds, an occasional clump of trees dot the crater floor, but for the most part it is a sea of grass.

Our safari this time had been arranged by a travel agent in Nairobi, complete with a sturdy safari vehicle and our Maasai driver/guide, Emanuel Olemollel. On the ascent to the rim of Ngorongoro, the road climbed and twisted in a tortuous series of heart-stopping switchbacks and sheer drop-offs - the "River Road," Emanuel called it, because "it becomes a river when it rains!" - until we reached the gate to the Ngorongoro Conservation Area and traveled around the rim to Sopa Lodge, where we spent the night.

Sopa Lodge, bustling Sopa Lodge, bustling with people and tour groups, sprawled down a hillside in a series of cavernous, motel-like rooms. We remembered with fondness the old Crater Lodge where we twice stayed in the Fifties - a few small rustic cabins perched on the crater rim with a view straight down into the sunlit crater floor. We learned to our regret that it had closed for renovation just the week before, but the morning before we descended into the crater the caretaker let us take a nostalgic stroll through the grounds and take pictures of the cabin where we once stayed.

This trip was, for us, more than a safari. It was a pilgrimage back to a happy time, to a well-remembered landscape where the enclosing walls sealed off the outside world and seemed to cradle the very heart and soul of Africa. Echoes of the past accompanied us as we drove all day on the crater floor among vast numbers of zebra, wildebeeste and gazelles, and large family groups of elephants.

Emanuel's keen eye spotted a trio of rhinos, their massive, prehistoric shapes moving ponderously over the golden grasses far from the road, white egrets distant specks on their backs. Current (and necessary) restrictions on off-road driving prevented us from circling them like we did in the old days, close enough to see the scars on their tough hides and to arouse their ill-tempered ire. We contented ourselves with watching them from afar and drove on.

Recent rains had turned parts of the plain spring-green and brought forth whole fields of daisy-like yellow wildflowers. Baby buffalo, hornless and looking like newborn domestic calves, stumbled along close to their mothers' sides. Two young zebras broke out of a large herd and began butting and chasing each other, like exuberant schoolboys let out for recess.

Ngorongoro's magnificent birds are ever present, so spectacular you can't help becoming a birdwatcher, even if only for a day. Black and white spur-winged geese floated serenely on a glassy pond; graceful long-legged African snipe waded at the edge of a watery marsh where a pair of Maccoa ducks, bright chestnut and black with cobalt blue bills, splashed and dove. Tiny long-tailed yellow flycatchers flitted energetically through the foliage of low shrubs; flocks of blue-helmeted guinea fowl scuttled off the road; a red bishop weaver in harlequin scarlet and black hopped about on a clump of tall elephant grass. And out on the plain a black-crested male kori bustard strutted toward a female, puffing out his neck like a balloon and raising high his black and buff tail feathers in a dramatic mating display.

Late in the morning we stumbled on one of those rare idyllic moments that sometimes take travelers by surprise. We stopped by a pool of calm blue water where a dozen or more hippos were lolling, heaving and snorting and raising their ponderous snouts to breathe, occasionally rearing half out of the water to open their jaws in tremendous yawns. A flock of hundreds of white egrets alighted, scattering across the emerald grass and up a nearby knoll as though tossed by a giant hand. Now a group of half a dozen elephants came into view, walking slowly toward the water. They stopped and stood uncertainly, assessing the presence of our Land Rover, then a big bull moved majestically forward, leaving the others behind. He walked steadily on into the pond. The hippos paid no attention, but continued to wallow and jockey for a place in he water.

Interlopers from another world, we had been momentarily part of a brief scenario that dramatized the occasionally benign face of Africa-ancient gray animals and milk-white birds surrounded, in the clear light of midday, by the strong, vibrant colors of jade grass and sapphire water and sheltered by the soft distant outline of the far crater wall. Nature for the moment in balance, at peace.

But as we drove on across the crater floor we were reminded again, by piles of skulls and whitened bones, of the savage reality that underlay this tranquil scene. The web of life on which the animals exist rests now and always on the complex interaction of predator and prey. Three lions stretched out in the shade of low bushes had eaten their fill of an animal whose bones were now being picked over by a gang of vultures. Maribou storks hunched in an outer circle, awaiting their turn, and a hyena skulked watchfully a short distance away.

As we headed reluctantly in the late afternoon toward the road back up the escarpment, we came upon another family group of elephants. They were busily stripping a small grove of trees of their branches and curling their trunks around mouthfuls of leaves. One of them decided that our vehicle had come too close and advanced toward us, trunk raised and great gray ears flapping ominously. Emanuel backed off cautiously and headed on up the track.

Ngorongoro was half in shadow now as the sun moved behind the rim. From a safe distance I looked back at the elephant, its trunk still raised in what I chose to remember as a farewell salute before the animal turned and resumed its endless pursuit of food.

Ngorongoro retains its aura of Biblical timelessness and peaceful isolation. Sometimes, you can go back again.