Welcome to Ngorongoro Crater. Today’s trip into the crater was our best game drive yet on this trip. The crater forms a natural enclosure, roughly the size of San Francisco. There’s little shelter in the crater and abundant wildlife, leading to many sightings. Between the massive tectonic plate shifts that created the great Rift Valley and the volcanoes that created the crater (one of many in the area, actually), this place has certainly seen its share of geologic adventure.

Today was another long day. It took about 3 hours to exit the Tarangire game preserve. On the way out, however, we happened upon two adult lions (one male, one female) with their 3 cubs. So that was good. Plus some friendly warthogs, which was a nice touch. Unfortunately the lions were not close to a road, so I was unable to get any decent photos. You’ll just have to trust me.

We did another marathon all day game drive today. It was fun but tiring. And a little disappointing because we didn’t see any lions or leopards. It appears to us that there’s little communication between the various drivers, so that finding shy creatures like lions or leopards is more luck than anything else. If we ran the place, things would be different. Because we clearly know better. Of course. On with the photos.

We were woken up around 5am today by what we thought were elephant calls from two elephants. One was calling from one side of the camp, the other was calling from the other. Turns out that two lions were hunting in our camp, and those were roars. Everyone was still here when we finally did get up, so I guess the hunt was not successful. The camp is a series of tent bungalows that overlook a large grassy plain.

I started a tradition several years ago, when I started to travel more frequently. I would email a ‘Pic of the day’ to my family while traveling, along with a brief explanation of the photo and what I was doing. At first, the pictures were from my Treo 600 and the explanations were brief. But over the years, I upgraded my camera as well as my prose (well, I hope). These safari reports are adapted from those emails.

We recently spent 10 days on safari in Tanzania, across 4 different parks. It was our second safari trip, after last year’s trip to South Africa and Botswana. On this trip I took 1,998 photos. This time, inspired by Andy Bigg’s recent magnificent Sabi Sands Safari Reports, I thought I’d try something similar, and group several photos into each blog post along with some commentary about what happened when we were out there.

We just returned from safari and are slowly adjusting to life back home. Whereas last year we visited South Africa and Botswana, this time we visited Tanzania, specifically Tarangire National Park, Lake Maryana, the Ngorongoro Crater, and finally the Serengeti. I’ll be posting pictures from our trip over the next several weeks, after we’ve gotten back into living in the correct timezone. But for now, here’s a picture of a Baobab Tree from Tarangire, and way more information than you wanted to know about it.

Another photo from near the summit of Mount Haleakala.

On my recent trip to Maui, I drove to the 10,023’ top of Mount Haleakala. Unfortunately on that day, the cloud layer started around 6000’, so I wasn’t able to see a lot when I got to the top. As the clouds would blow by, I tried to take a few photos of the telescopes at the top of the mountain. After some heavy post-processing, I decided that black and white was best for this photo.

On a trip to Maui last week, we paid a visit to the Nakalele Blowhole. A man was killed here last year when he was sucked under; we made sure to keep our distance. The blowhole is a natural formation in the lava flow. Water crashes in from the ocean and surges up the tube. In this picture, the water is shooting up 20-30 feet.