For me, being brought up watching wildlife documentaries on the BBC, Ngorongoro crater was something of a location of legend. I’d seen the stories of the lions and the elephants so often that I felt as if I knew what to expect.

We left Rhotia at dawn, driving towards the Conservation Area gates to be there nice and early. The approach to the crater could be just any other African mountain road – twisty, muddy, deeply rutted and with its scattering of near-broken-down trucks with burnt-out clutches and smoking brake drums.

There are calls from turaco as we climb steadily upwards through the forests, but they are pretty much impossible to get more than a glimpse of.

Nothing, however, prepared me for the reality of arriving at the top of the hill and looking down into the crater itself as the sun crept over the eastern rim, casting long shadows across the floor of the caldera. Living on an island surrounded by temperate seas is an insulating life. Our highest mountain on the Isle of Man, Snaefell, is just 620m tall and the entirety of it could be placed within this huge caldera and just reach the top. The far rim, visible through the light haze, is about 18km away.

Standing on the rim and looking 600m down the steep sides to the floor of the caldera is mesmerizing. With binoculars, we can see buffalo, elephants and even rhino as they start their day far below. Now we have to drive the rim road to get to the entrance to the crater on the western side. There are many other safari vehicles making the same journey.

The Tanzanian authorities try to limit the number of visitors to the crater, but they do this mainly by charging high fees for entry and few are put off by this approach. It doesn’t really work and we are one of more than 30 vehicles in the queue to pay our fees and drive down the steep entrance road into the caldera.

The price is worth every penny. The sheer density of wildlife is astonishing, there are thousands of animals and, finally, the predators I have come looking for are here as well. There are lions, hyenas, and as an added bonus, a serval makes an appearance from the long grass. There are hippos, buffalo and black rhinos as well, although the rhinos are quite shy and keep their distance from us and from each other.

The elephants here are spectacular, I’ve seen a few by this time, but not the giants that grace the floor of the caldera. There are huge bulls with more ivory than I’ve ever seen – indeed more than I’m ever likely to see in such a small group. They stride across the grassy plain in search of water as the day begins to heat up, 1.5m long tusks swaying before them as they stride.

The birds are no less spectacular. There are cranes, storks, cheeky kites and flocks of flamingo and great white pelicans both on the ground and in the air. Smaller birds are not left out, with pipits and longclaws perched by the roadsides.

That feeling of being in a giant bowl never leaves you – the crater wall looms above you much of the time and the heat in the shelter of the caldera is oppressive. It’s simply brilliant, provided you can overlook the occasional traffic jams around the lions. It clearly is a once-in-a-lifetime thing. If you are going to Tanzania, then it’s a must-see. You would regret it forever if you went so close and didn’t venture into the depths of Ngorongoro.