Blogs from Province du Nord, Rwanda, Africa - page 2

Advertisement


This morning was the long-awaited gorilla trek and it did not disappoint! We made our way through the forest to reach the location of one of the gorilla families (the second largest family in Rwanda.) It was a completely different terrain than yesterday's volcano trek, but just as muddy. Good thing the hotel staff cleans our boots! Anyways, back to gorillas. There were 23 gorillas in the family, including one silverback, some adults, some juveniles and some babies. First thing we saw was two gorillas doing the hanky panky. I guess they wanted to put on a show for us, so I filmed it and Tyson called me a pornographer. Hehehe. We stayed with the gorillas for a full hour. While we were there, our guides kept communicating with them to let them know that we ... read more
Baby and mama
Gorilla trekking in the forest
Silverback having a snack


So we made it to Musanze today for our volcano trek at the Parc national des volcans. I actually felt pretty safe while I was there (and hopefully I will feel the same way tomorrow for the gorilla trek). Might be because we were accompanied by 6 armed members of the RDF. The Bisoke volcano is about 13,000 feet high, but we started at an altitude of 8,000 feet (Rwanda is high in the sky!) It took us 8 hours, but we made it to the top and back down again. It was cold and rainy at the summit, so no great pics came from that. Holy frigg it was a hard trek. Very physically demanding given that we hadn't really slept in 2 days, the high altitude we were at and no real breakfast or ... read more
Summit
Bisoke Trail


Today Anne climbed a volcano and I received an armed escort out of the park. After arriving at the Volcano National Park and conducting a brief meet-and-greet with the guides and 5 other hike-mates we set off to the base of Bisoke. On the way we were treated to an extensive Rwandan massage (getting repeatedly tossed out of our seats) and joked about how small the volcano was in relation to Kilimanjaro. We joined up with our armed escort (for protection from the 'wildlife') and set off at a rocket-like pace. After the first hill, I was breathing heavily and shortly thereafter regreted making fun of Bisoke's height. When we stopped for our first 'break' we had been climbing for about 1.5 - 2.0 hours with myself and another woman from the UK (coincidently another engineer) ... read more

Africa » Rwanda » Province du Nord » Parc National des Volcans September 29th 2012

Saturday September 29 I took no photos in Kigale. There was so much to digest after the obviously heartbreaking Genocide Memorial and reminders were everywhere in the shape of amputees, some begging. Men on crutches with one leg. A woman with only one finger. Boys whose ages I can match to children I know with only one arm. I felt myself unconsciously cringing at the sight, tears welling in my eyes that I had to rapidly blink away. Our driver, William, tells us as we drive over a bridge that the river below us is where bodies were thrown. I pass boys playing football on a dirt field and wonder how old they are. Who they are and what their childhood was like. I would've been in my mid teens when Rwanda descended into chaos. I ... read more
Snack time
Detail
Gorillas, gorillas, everywhere!


Up at 5.00am, breakfast at 5.45am and met up with my driver who will take my up to Park HQ. After what appears to be some sort of auction process where the guides and drivers all yell how many people they have in their group we are eventually assigned a Gorilla group to see. There are 6 of us that will visit with the Titus group. The guide explained that Titus was the son of Digit, Dianne Fossey's favourite. Titus was known as the kking of the Gorillas and had a very large family of around 35 Gorillas including 6 Silverbacks. His first son Rano was a rambunctious sort and got fed u being kept in line by his father so he split from the family and attempted to take some of the females with him ... read more


I had intended going to the Genocide Memorial in Kigali this morning but had not realised the extent to which Umuganda applies. The streets are completely empty of vehicles, including taxis and motos as every person 18 or over, including the President, is expected to clean up their local area from 8.00am - 11.00am. Will have to put the Genocide Memorial off to another day. Wandered down to the bus station to wait for my bus to Musanze and got talking to a 20 year old Rwandan Engineering Student. His story was a pretty harrowing one with him and his sister being orphaned in the 1994 genocide. He was 2 and she just 8 months old at the time. Some how he made it from Musanze, in the north of Rwanda to the UN camps in ... read more


Bonjour J We visited Rwanda for 3 days, so I could trek the endangered mountain gorillas in the Parc National Des Volcans (where Dian Fossey famously researched them) and to visit the Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre, which remembers those impacted by the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and aims to educate so that it never happens again. It was a visit of extreme happiness (the gorillas) and extreme sadness (the genocide), a visit where we learned and were inspired. I had been looking for months for a tour including both gorilla trekking in Rwanda (the other options are Uganda - where the trek is more strenuous and you’re less likely to see gorillas as they move around more - or the Democratic Republic of Congo - which I felt was too volatile) and a visit to the ... read more
Rwandan volcano
The road to Ruhengeri
Driving to Ruhengeri


A couple of the emails said, “Rwanda . . . huh”. The skepticism was palpable. The messages plainly implied that this decision was significant in so far as it indicated deteriorating mental capacities and an alarming uptick in questionable decision making. Oprava’s email was more blunt: “Christmas in Rwanda sounds like, well, hell, but what does the white man know.” Precisely. What does the white man know? The media’s business is infotainment. It breathlessly recounts the horrific apocalyptic flavor of the moment for riveted audiences before rushing on to the next catastrophe in the heart of darkness. The news’ steady diet of natural disaster, civil war, famine, disease, and public uprising liberally indulges the schadenfreude of the fickle observer. Consequently, the Rwanda of public imagination is, and perhaps forever will be, rooted in the undeniably hellish ... read more
tea plantations and patchwork hills of Rwanda
bachman sees the gorillas
grooming and socializing


(Note: As we posted close together, check out barbe's post below first) The northernmost part of Rwanda is much like the rest - every square meter not occupied by a house or road has some sort of crop planted on it - except that that there are large sections that actually seem flat. I don't mean horizontal, necessarily, because it is all angled up towards the border with Congo and Uganda, but at least not endlessly bumpy (valleys and ridges). Barbe and I surmised that the relatively even angle of the ground probably was caused by lava and ash flows from the volcanoes having filled in all the valleys, to a certain distance from the peaks. (But what do I know about geology and rocks, much to Barbe's colleagues' consternation!) When we left Gisenyi (11 January ... read more
A Field of Pyrethrum Flowers
Baby Gorilla #1
Flying Through The Air!




Tot: 0.15s; Tpl: 0.006s; cc: 8; qc: 88; dbt: 0.0893s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1; ; mem: 1.3mb