Ngorongoro Crater Safari: One Day Later

So, this is my day late entry about Ngorongoro Crater. The computers were down last night, so no luck make an entry last night.
Anyways, we left TCDC at 6:30 in the morning and drove for two and a half hours to Ngorongoro Crater. About an hour out of TCDC, the countryside changed a lot. In some ways, it resembled the northern parts of Arizona, or the Badlands, in America. The green forests near Mt. Meru changed into savannah. There was a lot more dust, reddish-brown dust that seems to get into everything. Closer to the park, it became more green, and hilly. We drove over the Great Rift Valley, which was cool. We entered Maasai territory as well. (Today we actually visited Maasai) The Maasai have herding rights inside the Crater Park, but not the Crater itself.
We got to the gate, and paid our entrance fee, which was $30, student price. We drove up the Crater, to the rim. On the way up, once we were inside the park, we saw a waterbuffalo right by our road looking at us. Once we reached the top of the Crater, we went through another checkpoint, guaranteeing that we paid for today. Apparently you can pay to stay in lodges on the way up the Crater, and on the Crater Rim. After that checkpoint, we descended into the Crater.
The first animals we saw were zebra and Thomson's gazelles, this really tiny little things that are smaller than my dogs. As we continued driving, we saw even more zebra, and also hartebeast, wildebeast, waterbuffalo and greater gazelles. The animal herds would be on either side of the road, so we would drive right through them.
One really exciting encounter was with a pride of lions. We drove up, and there was this large group of 5-6 trucks, we drove around, and there was a pride of lions. There were 6 women, 3 cubs, and 2 adolescent males. They would come right up to the cars, to sit in the shade. At one point, I could have opened the window, put my arm down and scratched the lion's back. We got some great pictures. Our coordinator, Mr. Ndosi, said that he has never seen cubs that close before, so we were lucky.
We also saw hippos. They just kind of flop around in the water, splashing water on their backs with their tails, and sometimes even rolling over in water on their backs, with their legs in the air.
We had lunch by a lake with some hippos cruising around in it. They were funny to watch, you could only see their snouts, eyes and sometimes their backs. After lunch we saw more animals, zebra, wildebeast, water buffalo, gazelle, warthogs. Another exciting aspect was seeing rhino. We saw two rhino, far away. There are only 13 rhino in the Crater Park, because they were poached so often for their horns. We also saw elephants, from a bit of a distance. It was a lot of fun.
One part of the trip that frustrated me a bit, was that the animals were so acclimated to human presence (white tourists). The fact that we could drive through the herds, without them scattering, and that the lions came right up to us, was just a little disturbing in some ways. I mean, it's a double-edged sword. By having tourists come into the Crater, they are helping protect the ecosystem and preserve area for the animals. But, we are also commercializing an aspect of wildlife. Not to mention, we encroach on Maasai land and the tourist traffic changes the way the Maasai live. More on that in the next entry.
So, that was our safari. It was a lot of fun, and I enjoyed myself and got great pictures, but it still seems problematic to me.