The day started out just so-so.  It was cloudy, it was raining.  When we drove up onto the rim of the Ngorongoro caldera it was still raining, still cloudy and the road was rough.  Down in the immense valley it was still a little miserable but at least we were seeing wildlife.  Then it got amazing. 
We considered ourselves lucky to have spied a few lions at some distance.  But then we started coming on prides of them at close range.  When three rhinos walked toward our vehicles, we were over the moon.  Such a thing doesn’t happen.  And it did.  They came into iPhone range.  Whole trips pass without a rhino even at great distance.  We moved a few miles away and considered ourselves ridiculously lucky then to see a different pride of lions on a zebra kill. And then a rhino casually walked within a few feet of the pride and the kill… again, so close that a phone was all the camera needed for capturing it.  Our guides had never seen such a thing before.  We were simply amazed.  We drove off to the lunchtime picnic grounds shaking our heads in wonder.   After lunch we made our way up to the crater rim again and stopped in for a tour of a Maasai village.  We danced we watched them throw spears and make fire. We toured their homes and tried to understand their traditional way of life in an otherwise modern world. 
Then we drove back down the bumpy roads to Plantation Lodge and the lap of luxury for another evening. 

RMI Guide Dave Hahn