Africa 2024 6.0 Rwanda

Africa 2024 6.0 Rwanda

When:  5 to 9 May

Where:  Kigali (capital) and Volcanoes National Park, Rwanda.  Our resort is located at -1.444 lat 29.526 long which puts us approximately 160 km south of the equator.  Just over this mountain range is Democratic Republic of Congo and to the north is Uganda.

Weather:  Plenty of clouds but plenty of sun. Pleasant at about 23C. Despite being just south of the equator, Rwanda is quite mountainous and stays cool and wet. The weather on our trek day was perfect.  Mostly cloudy and about 20C.  A touch of rain at the start but that cleared away quickly.  Our final day in the country started with pouring rain.  Some guests at the hotel were going trekking that morning.  It would not be a pleasant experience but still worth it I'm sure.

What:  Gorilla Trekking!  Also a Kigali City Tour that included the Rwanda Genocide Museum.  

Who:  Daniel and Brent.   Shane and Steph stayed in South Africa and went to Kruger National Park

Workout: The trek up the mountain!  Fitbit tells me I burnt over 4000 calories on that day.

Walking: The trek again!  6 km round trip with an elevation gain of about 320 metres.  All this trough very narrow trails and dense rainforest.  

Wine:  The usual.  We had enough of it but it wasn't really the focus of this part of our trip.

Whine:  This is a justified whine.  The trek was supposed to be thirty minutes to get to the gorillas, but it turned into ninety as the family had moved.  Brent suffered greatly through the trek, but persevered and managed to get through it with a minimum of whining.  He had a porter that helped him along the way.

Wtf: We drove about 120 km from Kigali to the resort.  The number of people on bicycles or walking on the street was constant.  We started playing a little game.  Around every blind corner (almost all of them) we would predict how many metres before we saw a person or bicycle on the street.  Max was 500 metres and most times it was 100 metres or less.

Wild:  We met a newlywed couple from Mexico.  He lived in Vancouver for a little while and his ex-girlfriend worked at El Santo in New Westminster which is one of our favourite restaurants near home.  Small world. 

Traffic in Kigali is absolute chaos.  The streets are packed with cars driving, people walking with massive bundles on their heads, bicycles, and thousands of motorcycles.  Entering and exiting a roundabout is completely crazy!  Thankfully, we had a driver who knew the roads and rules very well.   This picture gives you an idea, but doesn't fully reflect the chaos:

Wildlife: Firstly, almost no insects and surprisingly few birds.  

And gorillas!

Eventually I will organize the rest of the photos and send them along.

I wasn't very happy with how the videos turned out but here is one of a mother and baby.  We saw two babies, one was a month old and one was a week old.  

Video:  https://youtube.com/shorts/MQYT003BC30?si=KFA70_bY1RrtmsQ6

Water: Everything is wet here as we're in a rainforest.  Rwanda has several lakes, but we didn't see them.  Rwanda is also a landlocked country so no ocean.  

Wonderful: Our Gorilla family's name is Kwitonda which means humble.  The whole family is very relaxed when it comes to humans and other gorillas.  But we did hear a tiff between the alpha and another gorilla.  He was clearly ticked off.  

Brent's words:  The trek was gruelling.  1.5 hours through rain forest, slippery wet and uneven footing and straight up hill… but the reward was exquisite.  Being invited into the gorilla’s home.  And believe me it was an invite.  We had to vocalize with them and listen to their response… actually a humbling experience.

Rwanda has made great strides in gorilla conservation.  The population is increasing and there are about 1000 gorillas there.  

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No category for this, but I wanted to give my thoughts.  Thirty years ago, a horrific genocide took place in Rwanda.  In three months, over one million people were slaughtered based on their ethnicity.  I remember the aftermath at the time and being overwhelmed with the failure of humanity and also the failure of the international community.  Lieutenant-General Romeo Dellaire, a Canadian in charge of the UN peacekeeping force, saw what was coming and begged the UN to send him troops.  He believed with a few thousand troops, he could have stopped it.  The UN refused and the genocide took place.

Our driver in Rwanda was 6 during the genocide.  He lost his entire family, but found out a couple of years later that his sister also survived.  He spoke of the genocide but I felt very uncomfortable asking specific questions knowing how painful it must be for him to talk about it.

There is a genocide memorial in Kigali which we visited.  It showed how truly horrific that period was.  However, the advances that the country has made in the past 30 years are commendable and remarkable.   The country is fairly poor but the people are not by any means starving.  They live in reasonable housing and crime is now extremely low.  They seem to have reconciled their past in a very short period of time.