In Arusha, looking for a campsite by a small lake, we follow Garmin until we admit we are lost and pull into a driveway on a steep old street to turn around, never easy in the Beagle. A woman comes to speak to us, turns out she owns the lakeside campsites. “But you don’t need to go there” she says, “just camp here in my yard”. Her name is Janet and her yard looks at the little lake on one side and Kilimanjaro on the other. It is colonial Tanzania at its best, the big house (which she rents out) and the small servant house (where she lives) on a huge overgrown piece of property. There are several dogs. Janet’s father was Henry Fossbeck, the first park supervisor for Ngorongoro, Serengeti, Arusha and Kilimanjaro National Parks, back in the British day. His crypt overlooks the little lake. There must be a million stories in the walls of his house. Janet grew up in the parks and her favorite is Ngorongoro. We were fortunate to turn up in her driveway, we thank her profusely and head for the Crater.

It is windy, foggy and cold at the Crater rim, draped in green jungle vegetation. The public campsite is right on the edge with enough flat ground to host a crowd – and a crowd is there. Tents carpet the area in front of the long mess hall and kitchen. Safari rigs and overland trucks are parked willy-nilly. Young people, heads down on their phones, mill about. There is a weak wifi signal and that’s all it takes to concentrate them. Zebras watch from the bushes.

The kitchen is lively, filled with Africans fixing dinner for the guests. Vegetables being chopped, music playing from iPhones, oil sizzling for samosas and banana fritters, potatoes boiling, the scent of garlic and ginger and fresh bread, all spiced with Swahili, make this a happening place. We build a fire in the charcoal trough for a braai. Guys come by to see what we are cooking and ask where we are from. Amid all the hustle, an elephant trumpets very close by. A big male elephant has walked all the way past all those tents and vehicles and gotten right to the door of the kitchen with no one saying a word. Now that he is announcing himself everyone with a phone comes running – so that is everyone, believe me. We watch in awe. He finally wanders off with half the crowd following, holding up their phones. What a scene.

The Crater is part of a large conservation area adjacent to the Serengeti Park, the area encompasses Maasai grazing lands and the Oldupai Gorge, the site of magnificent archaeological discoveries made so famous by the Leakey family and others. Standing at the edge of the Gorge, it is so easy to imagine the years slowly going by as humans made their way through evolution. Footprints discovered nearby at Laetoli in the 1960s date upright forms of hominids at 3 million years old. If that doesn’t sound like such a long time, think of it like this: 100 years x 10 = 1000, and we can relate to this history. 1000 x 10 = 10,000. Now we are getting out there. 10,000 x 10 = 100,000. 100,000 x 10 = 1,000,000, and so on, day after day, year after year. Then here we are. We cannot go to the actual footprints, sadly. There is a cast replica, it sends shivers up our spines to look at it.

Oldupai, not Olduvai, we are told, is named for the ubiquitous plant used by Maasai in this area. A new state of the art museum is being built at the Gorge which will be good reason to revisit – the current museum is ok, but there is so much more to show.  With any luck, there will be some money left over for fixing the roads – the African Massage, they call it. No wonder the Maasai walk so much, it is easier.