Ngorongoro Crater

Fees, and the descent charge nobody expects

Conservation area entry runs at roughly 70 to 80 US dollars per adult non-resident per 24 hours, set by the Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority. On top of that there is a separate crater descent fee charged per vehicle per descent, in the region of 250 to 300 US dollars, valid for a single six-hour visit to the floor.

That second fee is the one that surprises people, because it is per vehicle rather than per person. It lands heavily on a couple travelling privately and barely registers when it is split across a full car, and it is the single most common query we get on a Tanzania invoice. Vehicle fees, concession fees and any lodging or camping inside the conservation area are charged again on their own scales. Every figure here is indicative and the authority revises them on its own schedule.

The six-hour rule, and how to use it

Your descent permit is good for six hours on the floor, and the clock is enforced. The way to use it is to be at the gate before it opens, go down the Seneto road on the western rim, which is descent only, work the floor from west to east through the morning, and come back up the Lemala road on the eastern side. Lerai is the third road. Vehicles that leave the lodge after breakfast arrive on the floor with the rest of the circuit and spend their six hours in company.

The Ngoitokitok springs picnic site on the eastern side is where almost everyone stops for lunch, hippo in front of you and black kites overhead that will take food out of your hand if you eat outside the vehicle. That is not folklore; it happens several times a day.

What is actually on the floor

Lake Magadi is the soda lake in the middle and holds flamingo in numbers that rise and fall with the water. The Lerai fever tree forest in the south is where the big elephant bulls stand, and it is bulls rather than families, because the breeding herds mostly stay in the highland forest. The Gorigor swamp and the Munge stream hold buffalo, hippo and the lion prides that work the edges.

The rhino are the thing people ask about and the thing worth being honest about. They are usually distant, usually crossing open ground in the early morning, and usually seen through binoculars rather than in a photograph. A monitoring team tracks them daily. Turning up expecting a close encounter is how you end a good day disappointed.

Beyond the crater

The crater floor is one day and the conservation area is much larger than that. Empakaai, north-east of the rim, is a smaller crater with a soda lake at the bottom and a steep ranger-led walk down to it that most visitors never do. Olmoti is a shorter walk to a rim and a waterfall. Oldupai Gorge and its museum sit on the road west to the Serengeti and are worth an hour if you have any interest in why this landscape matters to human evolution. The Shifting Sands, a black volcanic dune that moves measurably across the plain each year, is nearby. These are how you get away from the traffic on the crater floor.

A conservation area where people live

The conservation area was created in 1959 on the understanding that Maasai displaced from the Serengeti would go on living and grazing here. Restrictions on cultivation, limits on grazing and a government resettlement programme to Msomera in Handeni have made that understanding contested, and it is a live political argument rather than a historical footnote. You will drive past bomas and cattle on the rim road and between the craters. It is worth knowing what the argument is about before you photograph it.