What is the Ngorongoro Crater?
A Journey Through the Cradle of Humanity
If you tried to imagine what the garden of Eden looked like, Ngorongoro Crater is probably as close as you’ll come. In fact, this geographic wonder is often referred to as the cradle of mankind. Nestled in the northwestern region of Tanzania, the Crater sits just south of the legendary Serengeti National Park. While the surrounding area is largely dried bush, the Crater is a sprawling fertile landscape — a sort of promised land.
Tanzania is flush with national parks and big game drives, but Ngorongoro offers something that none of the others parks can — one of the most unique and extraordinary geographic landscapes you’ll see. It is the world’s largest inactive and unfilled volcanic caldera. What is a caldera, you might be wondering? It’s a volcanic crater that forms after a major eruption that causes the mouth of the volcano to collapse. What this means at Ngorongoro, is that you will be able to visit safari lodges and tented camps that are set along the rim of one of the world’s largest craters. From that vantage point, you can look down into the verdant crater and look out for wildlife.
Over two million years ago, a volcanic explosion created this massive caldera. Before it had erupted, the volcano is thought to have been a similar size to Mount Kilimanjaro, which is one…
