Rwanda where to start? First off this country was not originally on our itinerary, but since we chose to travel with such a professional and efficient company who forgot to book our gorilla permits is advance, Rwanda is where we ended up. Unfortunately due to the nature of our late booking we ended up with a rip-off artist as our agent/guide, let’s call him Thomas. This began when he wanted all of our money the day before we were to leave, thankfully we didn’t give him anything and he showed up 2 hours late the next morning, pretty sure if we had given him the money he would not have turned up at all! Secondly he charged over half our group for non-exsisent visas, a few of us got out of it because someone on the truck knew that Canadians and Americans didn’t have to pay. If we hadn’t approached Thomas with this info I’m sure he would have charged us too. The drive to Rwanda around Lake Bouyoni was very beautiful, but a little scary as our driver, let’s call him Justice, believed he was a rally car racer.
We finally made it to Ruhengeri on New Year’s Eve and met Greg our Rwandan agent/guide. He was a top bloke who took us to our hotel, which was actually a Christian Mission, this concerned us slightly since it was New Year’s and some of us wanted a drink. Greg arranged it all and we went for dinner at a lovely restaurant (with typical slow African service) but good food, it also had a night club. So we rang in the New Year in a dodgy night club where we were the only white people and everyone was staring at us, but hey at least we got to eat this year!!!!!
New Year’s Day 5 of our group went to do their Gorilla trek (there was not enough permits for us all to go at once) and the other 8 of us went to Kigali the capital city of Rwanda. This turned out to be quite tricky since it was a holiday and no buses were running, after finding two cabs and arranging a price we were off. Once we arrived in Kigali it turns out that we had miss heard our driver and some arguing ensued. This of course attracted quite a bit of attention to us and once we realized we were surrounded we paid the guys and walked away, quickly.
Kigali was a little disappointing, the city itself looked great it had a business area, as well as lots of gardens and a old town. But everything was closed, we found a really nice restaurant to have lunch at, but that was it. I (Heather) especially wanted to visit the genocide museum but it too was closed. As we were walking back to the taxi stand we were passed by a television crew, so of course we all waved and smiled. It turned out we made the news that night as the only people out in Kigali!!! It truly was a ghost town while we were there.
Once back in Ruhengeri, we found 2 of the 5 members of gorilla trekkers, and immediately we knew something wasn’t right. I was worried that it had all been a scam and we didn’t actually have permits, but I was way off. They ended up doing their trek and having a great time, it was everything that had wanted. Sadly while Justice was driving them back, driving at a reckless speed through villages on a gravel road, a little girl (9 years old) stepped into the road. Justice tried to swerve to miss her but he ended up side swiping her and flipping the van onto it’s side. Our 5 friends, two park rangers (who they were driving home) all managed to get out of the van. Kim, one of the girls on the trip, had to help pull Justice out, he was semi-conscious but quickly lost consciousness and began having seizures. Reiny, our doctor on the trip immediately went to help the little girl (even though he severely injury his arm and actually had to fly back to Germany from Kampala) but she was killed instantly, so he turned his attention to Justice. The guys were really lucky that they had two park rangers with them as they were able to keep the crowds away while they waited (45min) for an ambulance (that was actually just a truck). If they had been own their own they could have been lynched. It put us in a hard situation because we still wanted to go and see the gorillas the next day, but with no driver or vehicle we weren’t sure what was going to happen. Greg came in and was amazing sorting everything out, including transport our 5 and Justice (who was ok) back to Uganda on a better road and getting us to the gorillas (safely).
Now for the gorillas, I will try and explain it but I know nothing I can say will do the justice this experience deserves. We trekked a family of silverback gorillas called Ahmorha, which means peace in Rwandan. There are 12 gorillas in this family including two 4 month old babies. We started trekking into the jungle (it was very hard work) with our guides, who had machetes to chop away vines and create a path. Now scouts get sent in ahead of us to radio the position of the gorillas so that we attempt to walk straight to them, we were really lucky, after only 25 minutes of trekking we got a call saying they were heading towards us!! We had to leave our bags with a guide and could only take our cameras, we were told to be ready for contact in about 10 minutes. Dan and I were at the front of the group so you can imagine my surprise when about 30 seconds later we nearly bumped into the alpha male of the group! It was scary at first, I really wanted to scream and run because he was so massive and just staring at us, but then I calmed down and we passed right in from of him. He then passed right by us again, nearly knocking dan over!!! That began our 1 hour with the gorillas. We saw all 12 of them, we got quite a show of play fighting from 2 adolescent males, we saw the little babies clinging to their mothers back. At one point we were completely surrounded (I was scared again) we had been watching 2 in front of us, when one came up on the right and then 2 approached from behind, even the guides were getting a bit upset because they are supposed to move us away but we had no where to go (there was a giant hole on the left, which one of the girls had managed to fall in already, she was ok). It was one of the coolest hours of my life, I couldn’t get the smile of my face (which you will probably notice in the pictures). Dan loved it too, we took some really great shots. I started to take pictures but then kind of forgot about my camera because I was so entranced just watching these amazing beasts. The hour passed too fast and we had to start to make our way out of the jungle, but the smiles stayed on all our faces for the rest of the day. We spent the rest of the day driving back to Uganda and Lake Bouyonyi to meet back up with the truck.
I wish we had more time to spend in Rwanda because it is an absolutely gorgeous country, with lots to offer and well, I would have gone trekking again!
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