Rwanda

So we drove from Kampala, Uganda to Kigali, Rwanda in one day. We were worried we might have problems at the border due to the Ebola outbreak in Uganda… luckily there were no issues. The drive was super beautiful and the road was surprisingly good. Early the next morning we took off to do a loop around SW Rwanda. First stop was the drive to Kibuye on Lake Kivu. The drive was beautiful, paved and going up and down terraced Rwandan hillsides. There were people everywhere… nowhere except the national park did we get away from a huge population. I read somewhere that Rwanda has one of the highest population densities in Africa… it definitely felt like it. Lake Kivu was stunning… and looking across you could see the mountains of The Democratic Republic of Congo.

After asking directions about 5 times (and getting the wrong answer 3 times) we started south down the dirt road along the lake. This road was super beautiful but the going was really slow for part of it… an off road practice ground for what was yet to come in Tanzania.

Next we headed to Nyungwe National Park to check out the Angolan Colobus monkeys. I also wanted to see the chimpanzees but they were currently not in the area.

On the way back to Kigali we stopped in Gikongoro to check out a genocide memorial. It was at a technical college where 50,000 people were killed in 1994. The memorial was a couple of mass graves and then a third mass grave was dug up and the bodies were preserved in lime. The rooms in the collage became their tombs. It was horrific. An amazing and poignant reminder of what had happened les than 15 years ago. One can only hope the people of Rwanda can overcome their hatred so this doesn’t happen again.