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Published: August 19th 2010
I was gunna climb Kilimanjaro
and all I got was this crappy tshirtThe bus from Dar was a little under 10 hours thanks to our crazy aggressive driver. On the way to Arusha, once we passed Moshi, I happened to look out of the window, and there it was, Mt. Kilimanjaro. I could only see what was left of the glacier on the top as it was a little hazy. I was going to pull my camera out, but at the time I figured I was going to climb it so I didn't bother. We arrived in Arusha and checked into Arusha Backpackers. We spent the next day checking around with various tour companies to attempt to tackle the mountain. The cheapest we could find after gear rental and tips was 1200 US, which is way over my budget just to climb a mountain. Even Serengeti was overly expensive (750 US minimum), and by now I've learned that a safari is a safari, it doesn't really matter where it is at as long as you see animals. We decided not to spend that much to go to Serengeti since all you are paying for is a name. At this point, we were getting discouraged. That night at the backpackers, we met the manager
of a tour company that did tours to the Ngorongoro crater, and for a very reasonable price (280 US for a 2 day safari). That was the one thing that I didn't want to miss in that area, so we signed up for the following day. After that, we took a bus about 40km to the East to get pictures of Kilimanjaro since we were no longer going to climb it. It ended up being too cloudy so we didn't get a single picture. I was glad I at least saw it on the bus ride previously.
The following morning we took off early for our safari. Day one was actually spent at Tarangire National Reserve, just south of Serengeti. There were only the three of us in the safari truck. We saw the usual, most notably a pair of Cheetahs that once again I couldn't get a good picture of. Those things are elusive. We spent the night at a hotel in Karatu, and got up the next morning for the crater. A couple from Spain joined us at this point. Ngorongoro crater, sometimes referred to as the 8th wonder of the world, was incredible. It was a
huge, mostly flat grassy area, about 16km across, in an old volcano, with a perfect circle of mountains all around it. It also had a few bodies of water. We descended into it, and not 10 minutes later, we were already seeing Lions. We saw about everything you can think of. Most notably we came across a Lioness who had just killed a Wildebeest. It started to rip the flesh off of the body when a Hyena come along to get in on the action. I took a video of the Lion attacking the Hyena trying to chase it off. The Hyena survived and let out a weird noise, and soon after two more Hyenas showed up. I could have stayed there and watched what was unfolding all day, but our driver decided that we had been there long enough and took off right in the middle of the show. I was a little disappointed leaving right in the middle of the action, but I can't complain. We had front row seats at an amazing display of nature in its most raw form.
We drove back to Arusha and spent the night. We got up early the next morning
Ngorongoro crater
there are hippos in the background and took a 12 hour bus to Nairobi, Kenya. We spent the next day exploring the city and decided what we wanted to do next. I noticed they had 'Obama Safari's' where you could go to the town where his dad is from. I thought it was kind of funny. We decided that we really wanted to see the rare mountain gorillas that are almost extinct, so we took a night bus to Kampala, Uganda. That was about a 12 hour journey as well. We got into Kampala the next morning, and took a cab to Red Chilli Hideaway and camped there for two nights. The next morning we discovered that it was high season for seeing the gorillas. You have to pay 500 US for a day permit to go into the park to see them which is an area that covers Uganda, Rwanda, and the D.R.C. (Democratic Republic of the Congo) With that price, you get an armed guide who takes you into the jungle and tracks them for you, which can usually take from 1 to 4 hours to find. We found out that there were no more permits until September. All of our stomachs dropped with
that news. My cousin and I don't really plan ahead, especially when it comes to traveling, so we were not prepared for this. After a cold beer we decided to get up the next day and take a bus down to Rwanda and try there.
In Kampala we took motorcycle taxi's to get around. They were crazy. The traffic in that town is intense. There are very few traffic lights (which are ignored), so for the most part is a free for all with lots of weaving and close calls. I thought it was fun, and a great way to see the city. Kampala also had a lot of extra security on the streets as during the final of the world cup, a suicide bomber took out about 65 people at a mall down the street from where we were staying. Apparently the bomber came from Somalia. Despite that tragic event, I found Kampala to be a beautiful city that sit on seven hills. It was fast moving and intense.
The next morning we took the motorcycle taxis with our full backpacks on (that was interesting) to the bus station and took off for Kigali, the capital of
Rwanda. I found Kigali to be just as nice as Kampala, but much more laid back. The city center is on top of a huge hill, surrounded by green valleys and countless hills. There is a lot of reconstruction going still after the tragic genocide event in 1994 that took the lives of over 800,000 people in a three month time span. The next day after we arrived we went to the tour bureau, trying to get our gorilla permit. Right next to the bureau was Hotel des Milles Collines, which is where the movie Hotel Rwanda took place (the actual movie was filmed in South Africa) At the bureau they told us we would have to wait until October. This was starting to become a real challenge being able to see the gorillas. After some discussion, we still decided to go to Volcanoes National Park, where the gorillas were, since its supposed to be an amazing place. We figured we would at least go hiking there. We spent a good three hours in the Kigali Memorial Center before taking a two hour bus to Ruhengeri.
The memorial center was an eye opener. There we learned all about the
genocide and its impact on Rwanda. Before Rwanda was colonized by the Belgians, they all lived in perfect harmony. When the
Belgians arrived, they discovered there were actually 3 different ethnicity's of people living in Rwanda, so they named them, and identified each individual. Two of the main ones were the Hutu and the Tutsi. The Hutu were the majority at around 84% and the Tutsi were the minorities, about 15%. At some point the Belgians began to favor the Tutsi. This caused resentment with the Hutu. Once Rwanda gained its independence, the Hutu were voted into power because they were the majority. Over the next few years, there were small acts of violence toward the Tutsi. During this time a genocide was planned. What triggered the planned genocide was when someone shot down the plane of the Hutu president of Rwanda as he was landing in Kigali. In an instant, they put road blocks all over the country and brutally murdered almost ALL Tutsi, women, children, everyone. Many people went to churches to seek refuge. This made them even easier to be found. The museum had a lot of graphic pictures of the bodies of the slain, along with
their stories. It also had human remains of people found in mass graves. The part of the museum that disturbed me the most was the kids room, where they had pictures of kids and how each individual died. People weren't just shot, they were beaten, raped, stabbed, chopped by machetes, infants were slammed against walls. The museum did an excellent job of capturing just how tragic of an event it was. Everyone was either slain, or fled the country. Rwanda was dead, and the world, who knew what was going on, failed to take action in time to help save the people.
When we arrived in Ruhengeri, we checked into a hotel. I spoke with the manager of the hotel, and told him that we really wanted to see the gorillas. He called his friend who owned a tour company to see if there were any permits available. They told us to go to the tour company the next morning. That next day we spoke with him and he said to come back at 5pm to see for the next day. When we did that, they still didn't know for sure. At the point, we decided just to show
up the next morning and hope there were people that didn't make it. There were enough spots for all 3 of us to get in. They told us we were really lucky.
Volcanoes National Park has 16 different families of Gorillas. 10 are used for research, and 6 for close encounters with tourists. They allow a group of 8 people to go to each family, so they will only grant 48 permits daily. July and August are the peak season for Gorillas. Jeff had to go with a different group than Stephanie and I did. On the hike up, our guide pointed out a volcano that we eventually had to climb. On the other side of the volcano was the grave of Dian Fossey (see the movie Gorillas in the Mist) who lived there for 18 years studying the animals. When we started our hike, the guide wasn't sure where our family of gorillas were located. Each family has trackers that go up earlier to find the gorillas, then radio in the location to the guides. About an hour into our hike they had been located. We had our guide, and a guy with a machine gun for security
and another person with a machete to cut the vegetation. There were quite a few poisonous plants we were told to avoid. For the most part, most of the hike up the volcano was on trails, but when we got close to the gorillas, they had to hack a trail over to them. Once that happened, making contact with these poisonous plants was unavoidable. When we first got to the gorillas I was instantly in awe. You get so close you can almost touch them. They are very relaxed, and don't even care that you are right there next to them. We watched a mother and a baby for a while. I broke away from the group and was watching a Silverback (fully grown mature gorilla). After a while he got up and walked right past me barely not touching me. That was a thrill. As they would move around, the guide and trackers would cut paths with their machetes so we could follow them. You get exactly one hour with the gorillas until its time to go down. I think we saw between 8-10 in all. It was an unforgettable experience and one I would highly recommend to anyone
traveling to Africa.
The next day we got up and headed back up to Uganda. We took a minibus to the border, walked over the border, then hired two different private cars and a minibus and got to the town of Mbarara where we spent the night. We got up the next morning and took a couple minibuses to get to Fort Portal. After taking a break, we hired a private car to take us about 20Km down the road to the Kibali Forest National Park to book a permit to trek Chimpanzees in the wild. The car dropped us off and took off. We then discovered we still had to go another 10Km down the road to get to the actual place we needed to purchase the permits, as well as for accommodation. We started hiking down the road. After about 1.5K, a huge truck with a goat in the back came by so we hitched a ride with them to the lodge and where we needed to get the permits. They told us to come back the next morning to get permits so we got a room for the night. We stayed in a tree house about
800m in the jungle from the lodge. We had to get there before dark and couldn't leave the tree house until light because it was too dangerous at night. We had to worry about snakes and drunk elephants (who got drunk from eating Amarula fruit). I was up most of the night listening to strange noises, some sounded like they were in the tree house and getting closer. One strange noise I heard outside sounded like being in a poker room with many people playing with their poker chips at once. I have no idea what it was.
We got up to get our permits, but more people had showed up than they had planned, so we had to wait another 3 hours before they could fit us in. It only took about 30 min to find the Chimps. It's amazing to think that their DNA is almost 99% the same as humans, making them our closest living relatives. We trekked them for about an hour. Chimps have a hierarchy, and we found the vice president, who is second only to the alpha male. We followed him around for a while looking for more of the group. Every once
in a while, he would walk up to a hollow tree and scream and pound on it trying to find other Chimps. It sounded like he was hitting a loud drum. When we were done with the Chimps, we took a car back into Fort Portal, spent the night, and headed to Jinja.
Jinja is the town where the source of the Nile river is found, the longest river in the world. It feeds from Lake Victoria. We spent the night at Explorers backpackers, and got up the next day for a day rafting trip up the Nile. They were class 5 rapids, and we flipped over at least five times. The waves were intense. I swallowed a lot of water and got thrown around a lot. One wipe out, I was taken down river a ways from our raft and had to have a guy in a kayak grab a hold of me before I went too far. In between rapids they would let us swim in the river, except for areas where there had been crocodile sightings. It was a really fun day and made me wish I would have gone rafting in the Zambezi. We spent
Baby Gorilla
I got a video of him doing a little dance the next two nights at Nile River Explorers Backpackers. It was on a large hill and had a great view of the Nile. After that, we went back to Kampala. Once reaching Kampala, Jeff headed back to Red Chili Hideaway and I took Stephanie to the airport where she flew back to the States.
We are staying in Kampala until next Tuesday, the 24th. We have spent this week trying to get an Ethiopia visa, with no luck. The embassy in Kampala will not issue us one, because they say we need work permits in Uganda first. We went to the US embassy and they could not help us either. We thought about going back to Nairobi, but we've heard its difficult there as well and some people have had to wait weeks for one, if they were lucky. We found the only way to get one for sure is to fly into the capital city of Addis Ababa, so we finally broke down and bought a plane ticket. We will spend about 5 weeks traveling around Ethiopia and then move on to Cairo. With the exception of Addis Ababa, there will be no internet in the whole country,
nor will there be any public transportation. We plan to hitchhike through the country and hopefully see all the sights we want to see. It will be slow moving, and probably uncomfortable, but I'm sure we will see a lot of amazing things.
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Rwanda/Uganda Toilet
"Highly recommend footwear in that Toilet" (you brave soul)