So, my Grand Gorilla Adventure turned out to be pretty much a bust! It was 10 minutes of “Gorillas in the Mist” followed by 30 minutes of “Gorillas in the Torrential Downpour”. I didn’t get many good photos at all and not a single photo of me with a gorilla in the background. The more evolved, philosophical, Buddish side of me says “that’s the way it goes”, “who can predict nature?”, “at least I saw 10 good minutes of Rwandan mountain gorillas which is more than most people ever get”. The other 70% of me (it’s a [View Full Entry]

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I saw gorillas today. As close to me, from my seat at the bar, as the barman is now, with the silverback about as far away as the TV on the other side of the bar. And they were the most unfazed wildlife I’ve ever encountered, ignoring us even when the guides spoke in low voices. The youngster nearest me watched me change the battery in my camera at one point, but that was one of the very few times I saw any indication that they were even aware of our presence. But I get ahead of myself. I knew three [View Full Entry]

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Today we enter Rwanda, a country filled with excitement because they represent the home of the gorillas for us, but a place also filled with distant recollections of the Rwandan genocide which happened only 15 years ago. Driving into the country, the scenery changes dramatically, the low-lying plains of Uganda replaced with narrow valleys and steep hillsides - all utilised for agriculture. Rarely have I seen cultivated land so high up... the land is filled with tea plantations and other food crops, and the locals toiling in the fields stop their work and watch us as we pass. Our first stop [View Full Entry]

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Left Ruhengeri this morning to make a few stops in the area around Kinigi, the town closest to the Verungas, on the road to the DRC. On our way out we saw two trucks of soldiers headed to the border. The Imababazi group from yesterday had seen a convoy of seven trucks full of UN soldiers also headed to the border. Hmm. We stopped at a Batwa settlement a couple miles outside Kinigi. The Twa are a race of pygmies that live in Rwandas forests. They make up about 2% of the population. We watched them perform a dance, and once [View Full Entry]

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Woke up this morning at 5:15 to see the gorillas. After an hour car ride to the national park office, we signed in and were put in a group with a dual American/Rwandan citizen who lives in Richmond. We were assigned our two rangers, who told us about the family of gorillas which we were going to see as well as about the mountain gorillas in general. Volcanoes National Park is right up against the borders with the DRC and Uganda. Both the DRC and Uganda have national parks on the other side of these borders. I use the term "national [View Full Entry]

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Observation: Red Eminem shirts are really common here. Question: How does a four year old Rwandan living in a remote village 45 mins walk from the nearest road end up with a "Hillary Duff 2005 US Tour" shirt? We went to a crafts associations today in a very remote village about a two hour walk from Ruhengeri. After working our way down from the mountains into a giant valley, we walked the last 45 mins on raised dirt paths between 8-10 foot tall beanstalks. Saw another Project Rwanda bike- that makes four so far. The fgirst thing we did was make [View Full Entry]

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Last night after dinner all the water in Ruhengeri ran out. It came back on at around 3 PM today. According to some of the locals, the water goes out once or twice a week during the dry season. We left this morning for Imbabazi orphanage, which is in a very remote part of the country near the Congolese border. We drove an hour down a paved highway out of Ruhengeri, and then moved on to a terribly made dirt road which basically consisted of volcanic rock with some gravel to "level" it out. On the way we saw lots of [View Full Entry]

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Uraho! Amakuru ni mesa. Rwanda is great. I once again slept a lot last night, a solid 10 hours. Woke up feeling like I got hit in the back of the head with a brick though. Heh, bricks. I'm fine now. I think it was mostly dehydration. This morning we left in our small group of just 6 of us (Mickey, Dann, Mary, Kelsey, Ms. Overbo and myself) to go work at a brickmakers' association about 4 miles outside Ruhengeri. Greg (our Rwandan friend from Amahoro Tours) gave us a lift, after we pushed his land rover a couple blocks to [View Full Entry]

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Slept a solid 11.5 hours last night. Toally wiped out from going 48+ without any sleep. We left the ghuesthouse at around 10 this morning for Ruhengeri. Lucky for us, the road between Kigali and Ruhengeri is one of the few paved roads in Rwanda outside the capital. It was quite a trip. Rwanda is called the land of 1,000 hills, but it should really be called land of 1,000 mountains. The topography is ver similar to that of Colorado. The travel experience was similar to the mountain passes in Colorado was well, excepting the fact that there was two-way traffic [View Full Entry]

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Wow, oog in oog met de mountain gorilla’s in Volcanous National Park. Wat een ervaring! Na wat wikken en wegen hebben we toch besloten dat het bezoeken van de gorilla’s een must do in Rwanda is. Het mag dan extreem duur zijn, dat vergeet je en de ervaring is onvergetelijk. Gisteren zijn we eerst naar de immigratie dienst geweest voor informatie over ons visum, we wilden van ons single entry visum een multiple entry visum maken. Dit bleek toch iets ingewikkelder dan gedacht. Maar we gaan hoogstwaarschijnlijk nog wel een buurland bezoeken. Daarna hebben we de bus genomen naar [View Full Entry]

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