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I'm prety happy with my itinerary and how it turned out. For eight days in country, I'm not sure I would have changed much, though I would have liked more time in Nyungwe and I would have liked that my inbound flight wasn't late and I didn't have to spend 9 hours at Nairobi airport instead of in Kigali.
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
This afternoon, we drove to a more remote village about 30 minute outside of Kinigi and did a walk through that village to see the houses and the standard way of life in rural Rwanda. It was pretty interesting, though it was hard to interact with any adults as they were generally shy.
Day 5
We got lucky on the way up and had an encounter with some gorillas that are not visited by tourists, and are only visited by researchers. We could hear them right in the forest next to us, maybe not more than 20 feet away. Our guide told us we were not allowed to go see them, so we waited hopefully that they would just come out. Unfortunately, they did not, though as we climbed higher, we could see them from afar feeding in the jungle.
The climb down was not difficult on the lungs, but it was very tricky because of the mud, and I probably fell around 10 times - but it was enjoyable, much like making your way down a difficult ski hill. By the end of the six and a half hours, I was very dirty (my pants will never recover) and dead exhausted. The afternoon was spent recovering and roaming around the farms again.
Day 6
Immediately after exiting the park on the other side, you find yourself in seas of tea fields, contrasting sharply with the misty forest on one side. The tea fields themselves were worth seeing, as I've never seen them so densely packed and go on for so far. The ORTPN guest house was a simple place in nice gardens with friendly staff.
Day 7
In the afternoon, I took a short walk to an isolated forest to watch a troop of 50 Angolan Colubus monkeys. Far easier to find and watch and pretty entertaining themselves. There is another troop of over 400 of these monkeys, but to get to them would have meant possibly another 7 hour walk.
Day 8
In the afternoon we drove back to Kigali, visiting the National museum in Butare along the way. As we got closer to the city, the haze started clearing up, and 70 miles in the distance you could see the volcano range that was so invisible when I was there just a few days earlier. I had a nice pizza in Kigali and had a great night's rest after a brilliant shower.
Day 9
I said my goodbyes, got on my flight, arrived in Nairobi, and found out my onward flight to Bombay had been conveniently rescheudled for 12 hours later the next day. After four hours of waiting, I was finally in my hotel, for 4 hours of sleep before having to come back to the airport for my flight back. Depressing as hell for it all to be over.
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Today was golden monkey trekking. I was the only one, so I had a guide, a porter, two armed guards, and two trackers all to myself. They were all great about trying to get me the best view of the monkeys for photographing them. Seeing them was easy, and they were not shy, but they moved so much and were often above you, so photography was pretty hard. I was back at the guest house by 11:00, so I had the rest of the day to take a nap, and take a long walk around the village and the farms and have fun with the 25 kids that decided to join me.
First gorilla trek today. I had pre-decided to do one trek to see a large group, and one trek to do a smaller group (if it could be aranged that way). I was also interested in having one hike be long, so as to really feel like I worked for the chance to see them. So, I was assigned to the Susa group, which is typically the furthest away and also the largest. After 1 hour's hike through farmland, as we approached the park boundary wall, our guide indicated to us that the trackers had found the gorillas an additional 4 hours walk away. He offered us the chance to turn back and get a refund if we didn't feel up to the challenge. Two girls decided that they had to get back and would miss the gorillas because they had to be back in Kigali by 4PM. Just as they were about to leave, our guide, Patience, let us know that he was just testing us, and that in reality the gorillas were just 15 minutes away. In fact, we saw them right at the wall within 5 minutes, and had an outstanding hour with them. We saw a blackback "cheating" with another female (if the silverback caught him there would have been trouble). We saw a 3 week old baby, and also the twins. We saw 3 of the 4 silverbacks, and a lot o gorillas in general, often crossing our path right in front of us. It was outstanding.
In the afternoon, we headed up to Virunga Lodge, where the views of the lakes and surrounding hills and volcanoes would have been amazing if not for the haze. As the sunset further, we watched a traditional dance, and it cleared a little, giving us a nice sunset behind the Volcanoes. This place was really in one of the more stunning locations I've ever been.
Second gorilla trek today. I specifically asked for Francois as my guide and got him. We were going to see Kwitonda group, which has 17 gorillas. Francois is very entertaining and very knowledgeable as he's been doing this for 25 years. We again found the gorillas shortly after entering the park, this time with many of them up in trees. Though there were less gorillas than with Susa, it never feels that way, becaues they are rarely all in one place anyhow. And I actually think that today's experience was better as it felt more close and intimate. Four memorable moments. First, a gorilla up in a tree that I was photographing decided to let me know what he thought of me and peed on my head and camera. Luckily I got out of the way before the real downpour began. Next, one of the large blackbacks came right up to Francois, put his hands on Francois' shoulders, pushed him down, and then calmly sat on him. Francois just told everyone not to take photos, and the gorilla got up and left after about 1 minute. My feeling is that this is a regular occurrence since Francois has been coming in there for so long, and was more a friendly greeting than anything else. Next, I had a female gorilla walk right up to me and put her face about 2 inches from my cheek. I was sitting a the time, so it was hard to move, so I just put my head down and didn't look at her. From what other people told me, she was looking right at me. I could feel her breath. Francois quickly came over and helped me move back and no one got a photograph! Finally, we had some great moments with the youngsters using their mother and father as jungle gyms, literally climbing all over their face and head making for some very funny scenes.
Today was the hike up Bisoke Volcano. Bisoke peaks out at about 3700 meters, and the hike starts from about 2600 meters, so its a climb of about 3600 feet. At the top is a crater lake and supposed great views of the valleys below, three countries, and all the other volcanoes. There were four of us on this hike with our guide. The beginning, as usual, was through farmland for about 45 minutes before we entered the forest. But unlike gorilla trekking where you often have to make your own path, here the path was wide and clear. In the beginning it is a gentle climb through thin forest and lots of stinging nettles, which are easy to avoid since the path is clear. However, as you start to get deeper into the climb, it becomes very steep and very muddy from the mist that always covers the volcano. They say you can hike it in the rain, but I'm not sure how, as footing was almost non existent in some places even with no rain.
About an hour and a half in to the hike, when it started to get very steep, we lost one of our hikers who decided to go down. We still had 2 more hours uphill to go before reaching the top. In total, it took us 3 hours and 40 minutes to get to the top. That was with about a 20 minute break hoping for the gorillas and the fact that I'm slow, so I think it can be done in sub 3 hours by people in shape. It was entirely clouded over at the top so that you coulnd't see 5 meters in front of you, let alone out into the valleys or other volcanoes. We also couldn't see the lake from the top, so we hiked down to it. I swear I would have walked right into it if the guide didn't tell me it was there. The whitish color of the lake blended right in with the mist, and there was no wind so it was dead still. When the guide was pointing it out, I was looking for it as if it was hundreds of meters down, when in reality it was only about 3 meters in front of me.
Today was intended for driving from Kinigi to Nyungwe Forest, via Kigali. I now got to see the beautiful countryside during the day. All the hills and the patchwork of farms was easy on the eye, but left you wishing for clearer days so that you could really appreciate it. One book had described Rwanda as one large vegetable garden and it couldn't have been more correct. We stopped in Kigali on the way, visited the ORTPN office which was pretty nice actually (not what I had imagined for a government office), and then headed to Nyungwe via Butare for lunch. Butare is a university town, is tiny, and is loaded with expats who are there as professors or doing research.
Shortly after Butare, the scenery became really spectacular as the hills grew taller, the farms were built higher, and the roads became curvier. In order to get to the ORTPN guesthouse for the park, we had to drive through the entire width of the park, about 1 hour and 45 minutes. The entire way was great. The road was in decent condition and it went through the heart of the park. All you could see on either side of you were hills and hills of uninterrupted jungle. It made you feel good that places like this still existed. We had numerous encounters with L'hoest monkeys on the road, and at one point were treated to a troop of 50 Angolan Colubus monkeys doing acrobatic jumps from one tree to another, all from the exact same launching point. The views of the forest were really fantastic.
I got up very early to go trekking for chimpanzees. You need to start at 6AM and the starting point is an hour's drive from the guest house. Chimp trekking is very different than gorilla trekking. Chimps move a lot, move fast, and move through the trees as well as the ground. While the trackers always know where they are, by the time you get there, they have often moved. You can hear them a lot, taunting you, and they make a racket. We spent 4 hours tracking them, most of the time off the trail just plowing our own way with the help of lead guide with a machete. We'd go down a hundred meters and find out that they had gone up. We'd go back up, and find out that they had gone down. Finally, after 4 hours of this, we got a decent view of a few of them in the trees. They are very large and extremely entertaining with the amount of noise they make. Our viewing wasn't great though, as sometimes people get very close and can watch them for a long time. It's better in the wet seasons when the trees have more fruit and there is less reason for them to move from tree to tree. After watching for about half an hour, we were so far off the track, that we actually needed to go down, off trail, about another hour before we found the track for a long, hard one and a half hour trek back to the top, where we found our car just before the rains poured down. It was very tiring, but all in all a lot of fun tramping through the jungle looking for these monkeys that didn't want to be found.
I was up early again for the waterfall trek, although this could be done directly from the guest house. Compared to the chimp trek, it was easy because it was all on the trail, but it was still a decent amount of downs and ups through the forest. Getting to the forest was a nice walk through the tea plantations. Along the way, we saw Mona monkeys, L'hoest monkeys, and Mangabees. The waterfall itself looked like something out of a movie with the dramatic lush green forest surrounding it and the cascading falls. With absolutely no one else around you really had the entire jungle to yourself.
My first morning to wake up late (7:30 AM) and then a short morning to drive around Kigali. The main stop was to go to the Genocide Memorial/Museum where I spent close to two difficult hours. It is a very well done memorial, and it is difficult to write about what you learned there. Needless to say it is very disturbing to find out what humans are capable of doing to each other and as you leave you can't help but be overwhelemed by sadness and grief for all the people who suffered and still suffer. Although you can't learn much in such a short time, I was still amazed at how the country openly acknowledges its past and is reconciling in positive ways. We'll never understand what it means to go through something like that and what it takes to recover.