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When entering Loduari Gate and driving up the winding forest road to the top of the crater wall, it is impossible to imagine that dry season can offer such a different view once there.
The Crater itself appears to be a large, shimmering bowl of beige grasses highlighted by a rich green encircling the swamps.
Lake Magadi is a white ringed, salt lake almost dividing the floor and morning mists give way to the warm spring days.
In these dwindling winter days, Kilimanjaro sometimes makes a surprise sighting on the eastern horizon, defying belief that there can be a world even higher than you are.
Another world unfolds after the descent road is conquered.
Turning and twisting on the crater's interior wall, reveals one supreme photographic opportunity after another and even the most nervous passenger is lost in the wonder of the teeming life coming into focus the closer one gets to the varied habitats that make up the base of Ngorongoro Crater.
Long bleached grasses reveal huge buffalo herds, elephants with tusks that seem longer than the elephants themselves and of course, the black manned lions the crater is so justly famous for.
Where there are big cats there are usually small cats and dry season is the perfect time to see them. Wild cats and servals are treats usually reserved for the really keen animal spotters.

When leaving the highlands and dropping into the low, dry plains, yet another unimagined world awaits Ngorongoro travellers. Grasses nibbled to the roots barely contain the light ash earth of this ancient volcanic savannah. The dry season winds roll huge clouds of dust from the edge of The Rift Valley, without seeming to disturb the delicate looking but hardy gazelles that revel in these harsh conditions. Cheetahs feed mostly on gazelles. The short grass conditions are perfect for catching thrilling hunts on film. Lions and hyenas are known to take kills from cheetahs which one of the reasons they prefer to hunt in the middle of the day when the more nocturnal animals take their rest.
Even the most relaxed lion is aware of movement within its vision and will trot long distances in the heat of the day if a meal is in the offering.
Ngorongoro Conservation Area has a swamp leading into two lakes which in turn cut into Oldupai Gorge.
The bird life in the dry season in this swamp in the western reaches of the NCA is an adventure in itself. It is one of the very few permanent sweet water sources and of course it draws the crowds.
There is so much to see in every season in The Conservation Area.
By the time you reach the other gate on Naabi Hill, which leads to The Serengeti, you just want to turn around and head east, make a big circle and see it all the other way around, and why not, anything is possible in Ngorongoro.

September - October 2002