 Ngorongoro Crater is the largest, unbroken volcanic caldera in the world and situated in northern Tanzania.
Since 1979, the famous Ngorongoro Crater is a World Heritage Site and located at the eastern edge of the Serengeti in northern Tanzania. The Crater belongs to the Crater Highlands, with vast plains and stretches of bush and woodland, creating complex and interrelated ecosystems. The entire Ngorongoro Conservation Area covers about 8300 km 2 and besides the famous Crater it consists of Olduvai Gorge near its centre where many fossils have been unearthed, the alkaline Ndutu and Masek lakes in the west, which are particularly good areas for game viewing during rainy season from March to May. In the east of the conservation area are a string of volcanoes and craters and along the southern border is Lake Eyai, a salt lake around which the Hadzabe people live, who are one of Tanzania's original ethnic groups. To the north-east on the Kenyan border is the beautiful Lake Natron.
Ngorongoro Crater is one of Africa's best known game viewing areas and Tanzania's most visited. With about 20 km wide it is also one of the largest collapsed volcanoes in the world. In the Crater you find a variety of animals and vegetation, including grasslands, swamps, forests, salt pans and a freshwater lake. You are likely to see lion, elephant, rhino, buffalo and many of the plains herbivores such as wildebeest. Thomson's gazelle, zebra and reedbuck, as well as thousands of flamingos wading in the shallows of Lake Magadi, the soda lake at the crater's base. Despite its steep walls, there's a considerable movement of wildlife in and out of the crater – mostly to the Serengeti, since the land between the crater and Lake Manyara is intensively farmed. Yet it remains a favoured spot for wildlife because there's permanent water and grassland on the crater floor.
The animals don't have the crater to themselves. Local Massai tribes have grazing rights and you may come across them tending their cattle. During the German colonial era there were two settlers' farms in the crater; you can still see one of the huts.
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