There’s a few movies I now need to watch – the first is obviously ‘Gorillas in the Mist’ and also ‘The Last King of Scotland’ in relation to Uganda. I could also easily rewatch ‘Hotel Rwanda’ and just for fun – ‘The Lion King.’ Wish I had the soundtrack on my ipod.
Lake Bunyoyi
Usually this trip camps down by one of the deepest lakes in Africa (6,500 feet down) but with all the rain our tour leader and driver made a fantastic decision not to take the truck down a crazy hill. We instead stayed in Kigale proper and since it was a hotel and there were rooms that only cost about $15 I decided to upgrade and get my first bed and own shower this trip. Was very nice…
Since we had arrived in Kigale around mid-afternoon, we hired some vans to take us down to the lake. Was a pretty scary road in the mud but a beautiful place once you were there. A group of us went swimming to get rid of the mud from the morning until another storm came through and everyone retreated to cover.
Getting out of the valley was pretty exciting, much like a theme ride without the harnesses. Got back to the hotel for more fantastically cooked food and went to a local bar. Pretty quiet one and watched some more football. Missing knowing what’s going on sport wise back home since haven’t had internet for a while now. (EDIT: Got internet but all bad sport news… boo…) Should be getting it in Rwanda.
Rwanda Border Crossing
Used my first visa that I had got in London – saved tons of time since the other poor Australians had to wait forever to be cleared. Had to change some money into Rwandan francs since not many ATM’s in the country and since still had 20 pounds from London got rid of them. Dodgy guy tried to give me Euro rate but after surviving Balinese money changers wasn’t going to be fooled that easy!
Kigali – Genocide Memorial and Hotel
Rwanda is known as the country with a thousand hills and that couldn’t be more accurate. Our driver commented that you never go in a straight line in Rwanda. You’re either going to the left or the right, and either up or down. It’s a beautiful country and some of the vistas are amazing. We headed to the capital and a genocide memorial/museum. Was another moving experience but was very impressed with how the memorial was organised and how it mapped genocides that occurred around the world. Don’t want to go into all the gory details but a few things impacted me.
1. The U.N. and international community really dropped the ball on this one. [See Srebrencia]
2. There were some incredibly brave people protecting the persecuted in Rwanda. Makes you reflect if you were safe from the horror would you take a risk and protect the innocent knowing you could be killed.
3. The division between the different tribes came down to how many cattle you owned when the colonial forces did a census. 10 or more cattle and you were one group, less than 10 you were the other one. Totally arbitrary.
4. The French are trouble… I thought the Belgians would get a bit of a black eye from how it all went down but more was mentioned about the French training and supplying the army, as well as giving them an escape route into DRC near the end. Couple this with the lack of mention of the holocaust in Paris’ World War 2 Museum and it’s not pleasant. It was interesting talking to a German who is also travelling with us – they are continually bombarded with all this stuff during schooling and just get sick of it. Reminds me a bit of Australian kids being forced to go into a fair bit of detail regarding Aboriginal history which results in them being totally uninterested in the topic.
But overall, you get a sense of ‘moving on’ from the disastrous past and trying to integrate and embrace a new future. Even the different tribal names shouldn’t be used in Rwanda so I haven’t included them in this blog. The people who live in Rwanda are just Rwandans and they are a fantastic group of people.
Had to visit the actual hotel the movie was based upon. The movie was filmed in South Africa so it wasn’t exactly the same but still got a sense of it all. And had my best bathroom experience so far in Africa…
(Hotel Rwanda – ‘Hotel of a Thousand Hills’)
Volcano Hike
After leaving the capital we headed to our base for 3 nights (so special spending 3 nights in the same place!) in Ruhengeri. Got to stay in dorms here – no tents – and had to decide what activities we wanted to do on our spare day we weren’t going with the gorillas. A group of 4 of us decided to climb a volcano. Didn’t really know what I was getting myself in for but it was a great experience. Had to wake up really early and head out with our guide, 2 porters (I paid for 1 to carry my bag – they rely on tourists for their income now their homes are a national park) and 4 gun-toting army guys. Was an easy start to the climb but soon it got fairly steep and the path was extremely muddy. Tried to keep my shoes clean to begin with but just gave up and was squelching through the slop knowing my white socks were a lost cause.
Another problem I found was that the altitude started playing havoc with my breathing. The steep climb got my heart rate racing and when I stopped for a rest it felt there wasn’t enough air. I wasn’t in trouble or blacking out or anything but just felt very unfit and slow. Wasn’t the slowest climber (there were two randoms who had joined our group of 4 who were very ill prepared for the climb – wouldn’t recommend wearing converse shoes on this hike like they did) and definitely not the fastest but got there in the end.
(Top of Volcano with my Porter)
The top of the volcano had a crater which had filled with water and become an amazing lake. This mountain also was part of the border between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. It was a fair way round and I really wanted to walk around the top so I could say I’ve been to Congo but our guide wouldn’t let us. Had lunch at the summit which was unfortunately covered with cloud/mist the whole time we were there so couldn’t get any photos of the view but still glad we made it.
Headed back down with the porters and army guys giving us all a hand. The funniest thing was when I would slip over by myself the porter would say ‘sorry’ as though it was his fault he hadn’t stopped the stupid and clumsy tourist from landing on their backside. Luckily the mud was soft and we got down fairly quickly (but not cleanly). It was overall one of the most strenuous things I’ve done – beating even the 12 hour Rogaine of ’07. One of the people on the hike said it was harder hiking then the Inca Trail due to the mud. Slept extremely well that night.
(In front of Volcano with my rough wooden staff – it’s a [common] item)
Gorillas!
After the exertion of the day before I was hoping to get less of a hike finding the gorillas. Managed to swap into a shorter walking group (the guide recommended telling the organisers we had climbed the volcano the day before) and headed off to track the Hirwa group. So obviously the question for this blog is what is a group of gorillas called?
The Hirwa group was a newly formed group so had fewer gorillas then some other ones (especially the biggest one – Susa) and just had one silverback who was supposedly quite the gentlemen. He’d managed to steal 6 females from other groups in a relatively short space of time (which was somewhat incredible) and one of these females had twins. After our guide had joked with our group that we had a 4 hour trek ahead of us (the older couple with us did not look impressed, even after he said he was joking and it was only 20 minutes away) we headed into the jungle and came across them.
The permit costs $500 US and it was some of the best money I’ve ever spent (the $10 to the porter yesterday for the volcano hike was just as good…) and I couldn’t recommend the experience enough! There’s talk of raising the price to $1000 but even so it’s such a unique experience. There were so many amazing moments I’ll just focus on the best two.
The first would have to be seeing this.
(Mum breastfeeding twins)
It’s not fully clear from the photo but she’s got the twins on both breasts. One of our group is a mid-wife and was suitably impressed with how easy the gorilla made it look. It was such a surreal moment with her nearly posing directly at us and so close. After a few minutes she got up and we saw the twins grab hold and hang on as mum wandered right past us. Got video footage which is my favourite record of this trip.
The second highlight was right near the end when we went searching for the silverback. We had seen him briefly before hand but were wandering around until eventually we had to backtrack a bit.
We climbed up a bit of a ravine and then right at the top on the side the silverback was just lying there – about a metre away. This photo was taken later since we weren’t allowed to stop near him but you may be able to make out the ramp in front of him we had to walk up.
(Silverback in background)
As we were taking photos the kids arrived and play wrestled around dad as you can see in the photo. Totally magical moment. Even though this was a smaller group there was heaps to see and they were moving around and so interesting.
Lake Mburo – Uganda
Well, this had turned out to be a long blog so will just skip through the rest – nothing too exciting compared to the previous days. We left Rwanda early and headed to another national park in Uganda. (Had to pay another $50 to re-enter Uganda… rip-off…) Got there in time for a late afternoon game walk where we would hopefully see a leopard but no luck. Saw lots of zebra and antelopes. A joke going round the group is that whenever we see a relatively boring animal (like a waterbuck) we’ve got to call out something exciting. (Due to false alarm early in the trip – some people are a bit premature in pointing out animals.)
(A pack of Lions – I mean, waterbucks…)
Had a sleep-in the next day (7 am) and now heading to Jinja for some exciting times.
Week Ahead
Fri, 23rd of Sept Jinja
Sat, 24th of Sept Eldoret, Kenya
Sun, 25th of Sept Nairobi
Mon, 26th of Sept Mto Wa Mbu, Tanzania
Tues, 27th of Sept Ngorongoro Crater, Serengeti National Park
Wed, 28th of Sept Ngorongoro Crater, Serengeti National Park
Thurs, 29th of Sept Mto Wa Mbu
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