We were on the road again during October and November, making three weekend trips within the country. They say that good things come in small packages, and that is, without a doubt, the case with Rwanda, a land comparable in size to Haiti or Maryland. Leaving from Kigali, one can easily reach country borders north, south, east, or west in just a few hours and, in between, find perfect spots to visit. Whether it is kayaking and exploring the islands of Lake Kivu, chimp trekking and walking under a tropical rain forest canopy in Nyungwe Forest National Park, hiking up a mountain to find and observe silverback gorillas in Volcanoes National Park, or joining a safari to check out predators and prey in Akagera National Park, there are treats to please the fancies of everyone here in Rwanda.
Cyangugu and Nyungwe Forest National Park
During the past few weeks, we have decided to continue exploring the country and, on one weekend, headed south and west to visit south Lake Kivu and its southernmost town, Cyangugu (also called Kamembe). Lake Kivu's large towns with accommodations are roughly three to four hours apart from one another. They are the centrally-placed Kibuye (reported in our previous post, Story 5: Road Trip One), Cyangugu (in the south), and Gisenyi (recently renamed Rubavu) in the north. Both Cyangugu and Gisenyi border the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Cyangugu is the older border town and is much quieter and smaller than the more touristy Gisenyi. However, fewer than 45 kilometers east of Cyangugu is Nyungwe Forest National Park, the largest tropical mountain rain forest in Africa. This forest houses about 310 different bird species, hundreds of butterflies and orchids, and over 75 different species of mammals. About a quarter of all Africa's primates are located here in this forest which spreads over 1,020 square kilometers and takes over an hour to drive from east to west (assuming one does not stop to gape and gasp at the magnificent scenery around every corner of the winding road).
We set off for Cyangugu around 7:45 a.m. on a Friday morning. Before reaching the town, we drove through the Nyungwe Forest National Park snapping photos of lush mountain vegetation, its tall mahoganies, ebonies, giant tree ferns, verdant valleys, and small waterfalls. On several occasions, we spotted white-bearded, orange eyed, blue scrotum L'Hoest monkeys, some of whom skittered into the forest when we approached, while others conspicuously posed for us as we clicked away.
Before reaching the western most exit of the forest, we stopped at the Uwinka Overlook and explored the visitor center, an interpretive exhibit of Nyungwe's plants, animals, and history. While there, we almost stumbled upon the skull of the last elephant which roamed the park and was trapped and killed by poachers in 1999. Research is currently being carried out to reintroduce elephants to the park and identify the kind of elephant that can adapt to its climate.
This is also the place to hire guides, mandatory for any hikes within the park. We spoke with the administrator of the center, Julius Caesar, and told him we would definitely be returning the next day to book a hike.
As we left the forest, with about an hour more of travel to Cyangugu, we entered a sea of tea plantations. The Gisakura Tea Estate is located two kilometers from the western edge of the park. Rwanda Mountain Tea Ltd. is an investor in tea plantations and tea processing facilities. In 2010, Rwanda Mountain Tea Ltd., in a consortium with an Indian company,
successfully bid for 60% shareholding in two tea estates in the area: Gisakura and Mata. Not only is tea an essential cash crop for Rwanda, but it employs 53,000 people.
Tea, or icyayi, is the most popular hot drink for Rwandans. African tea is our favorite of the tea drinks. It is a spiced black tea made with lots of milk, sugar, and ginger. What is interesting about drinking tea in Rwanda is that it is served scalding hot in a large flask. For about $1.50, you can easily get three or four cups out of your flask. Interested in making your own African tea? Try this recipe and let us know what you think.
About mid-afternoon, we arrived at the Hotel des Chutes, a mid-range "seen its better days" lodging located on a hill and spitting distance from the DRC border. The view from our balcony and the restaurant terrace was of Lake Kivu and the bridge to the DRC, and of course, beautiful sunsets over the lake. This hotel's main asset was the affordable variety of delicious food offerings. The Spanish omelette along with our plate of sweet bananas, mango, pineapple, and passion fruit at breakfast almost looked too beautiful to eat.
Below is a three-minute video of our trip from Kigali, through Nyungwe Forest National Park, to Cyangugu, and north along Lake Kivu on our return. (The video of our trip within the park follows and includes our encounters with chimps. Don't miss it!) You will undoubtedly recognize the soundtrack of On the Road Again by Willie Nelson. Enjoy and let us know what you think!
Although there was an electricity outage during the night, low battery life in our phones, and no water to take a shower, we decided to keep to the plan and return to the Uwinka Outlook and book a tour. With lots of choices of hiking trails of varying distances and levels of difficulty, we picked the Umugote Trail, which was labeled as a 3-hour moderate hike where we might see turacos and mountain monkeys. Turacos are unique birds to this park having a red color pigment on the underside of their wings called turacin. These red feathers are visible when turacos fly off and may be used to warn social groups of approaching predators. The Umugote Trail is named after the umugote tree which is discussed briefly by our guide, Christophe, in the video which follows.
We set out at 1 p.m. with Christophe, equipped with walking sticks for the 3.7 kilometer hike. The first ten minutes began on the road. When we reached the trail, Christophe advised us to put our pants inside our socks in case there were fire ants on the path. The trail has two paths: the Lower Umugote Trail and the Upper Umugote Trail. Although this was not a chimp trekking tour, Christophe told us that there were chimps spotted earlier near the upper trail. Chimps are constantly moving in search of food so it is difficult to predict where they might be on any given day. Christophe suggested and we readily agreed to take the upper trail. It seemed impassable at first glance as there were tree trunks and branches blocking the way, but we managed to climb over the mess...though not very gracefully. About 30 minutes later, we heard the somewhat terrifying screeching sounds of chimpanzees in the forest very close to us. There are about 500 chimpanzees which live in this forest and we were about to have an encounter with a few of them. This was definitely the highlight of our hike seeing alpha males, mamas with their babies on their backs, and other chimps swinging from branch to branch Tarzan style, causing branches to fall mere meters from us. Fortunately, our camera batteries held out and we were able to capture this epic event...well, epic for us!
The last 20 minutes of our hike was up a steep never-ending hill (mountain) which brought us to the road again. Whew! We did it! Not in record time of three hours or less, but nearly four hours. We arrived at 4:45 p.m. and Christophe's fellow guides were waiting for him so they could board their transport and head home for the evening. Christophe is a true professional, providing us time to deal with the lush but hilly terrain, and taking the time to answer our questions as we videotaped him.
Observations on our Cyangugu/Nyungwe Forest adventure:
Invest in a good camera if you want to get National Geographic quality photographs. Our were taken with our smartphones as the battery for our one camera gasped its last breath just as we began our Rwandan stay a few months back.
The guides at Nyungwe Forest are professionals and will customize their tours to your needs and wants.
If on a Rwandan resident visa, always (dis)play the (ID) card when seeking discounts on tours.
Research well in advance of making trips in order to leave with some background knowledge of the places to be visited.
Chimpanzees are large, strong and can weigh as much as 150 pounds.
It takes a lot of skill to keep your eyes on the potholes in the roads, the mass of humanity walking and riding bicycles and motorcycles along the roads, and the attractive scenery of the countryside without causing an accident.
Comfort at the end of a long day is well worth spending extra on lodging.
The ten-minute video that follows highlights our adventures along the Umugote Trail in Nyungwe Forest National Park led by our very professional guide, Christophe. We have tried to capture our encounters with the chimpanzees as clearly as possible and hope you experience the excitement we did! The soundtrack is Naramukundaga by King James, a current hit on the local radio stations in Kigali. It tells the story of a young man who could not capture the heart of the woman he loved.
Gisenyi and Lake Kivu
Earlier in a week past, we had finished administering the mid-term examination - the Continuous Assessment Test (CAT) - to our students in our English Teaching Methods class and were ready for a trip...but more on that in a moment. The CAT is an important exam for our students, and in our case, the two-hour two-part essay was worth 25 points, or marks so called here in Rwanda, toward their final course assessment. Group assignments comprise another 25 marks while the final exam is worth the remaining 50 marks.
Why are we talking about the CAT in this On the Road Again post? After testing, we had decided to visit northern Lake Kivu. One of the Fulbright English Teaching Assistants - Lara Gooding - who lives in Gisenyi, a city of 100,000 people located in the northwest corner of the country, invited us to be guests on a Friday afternoon in her English Club at the American Corner.
We planned to leave the hustle and bustle of Kigali and head for this restful retreat and...grade the 56 essays!...while sitting beside the lake or on the balcony of our bungalow at a hotel called Waterfront Resort. The hotel is located on a peninsula about a 20-minute drive from the center of Gisenyi. The picturesque site overlooks a large grassy area with
umbrellas, bamboo chairs with comfy cushions, a small playground for children, an outdoor bar, a sandy beach, and a small dock with a boat that can be rented for lake tours. The landscaping is out of Better Homes and Gardens. Exotic flowers and plants line the path. One has a choice of an African styled bungalow or a modern bungalow for twenty dollars a night less. We opted for the modern bungalow which did not disappoint us at all.
After checking into our room, we grabbed a bite to eat and then headed into town to the American Corner at the University of Tourism, Technology, and Business Studies where Lara was running her English Club. What a treat it was to meet her diverse population of students. She has students from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, Rwanda, and even a student from Nigeria. The students were very curious about life in America, our university system, and our impressions of life in Rwanda. The most interesting question raised was, "Why do you think America is a super power?" Anyone want to venture commenting on that one?!! The class was supposed to run from 3 p.m. - 5 p.m. but no one wanted to stop the conversation. We left around sunset (6 p.m.), stopped by Lara's house to see her digs, and then headed back to the resort for dinner. The twenty-minute ride back in the dark was quite terrifying. The experience felt like Disneyworld's House of Horrors with motos swerving in and out of the heavy traffic, cyclists carrying passengers, cars with their bright beams on coming at us, and hundreds of pedestrians walking along both sides of the narrow winding unlit roads. On top of that, a heavy rainstorm was brewing and the rain on our windshield was adding to our already high levels of stress.
We arrived back at the Waterfront Resort safely, had a lovely dinner in front of a blazing fire and persuaded Lara to spend the night instead of going back in the pouring rain on a moto. We had an extra bed in our room, so it worked out well.
The next day, we hung out by the lake and started grading our students' CATs. If one has to do school work, doing it beside Lake Kivu certainly buffers the toil!
That night we had dinner again with Lara and later in the evening met a friendly lawyer from the DRC who came over to our table and introduced himself commenting on how we were such a lovely couple and obviously in love. We are not at all sure what gave him that impression because we were both glued to our phones. We learned lots about his life on the other side of the border and, of course, we had so many questions to ask him about life there. All this was done mostly in French, so this was great practice for us.
The next morning, we returned to a lakeside table to grade more exams. We debated staying another night and driving back to Kigali in the morning. Practicality won out in the end. We will be back, Gisenyi! We will be back soon.
Some observations and lessons learned from our stay in Gisenyi:
It is always helpful having students work in places you visit or frequent. One of Lara's students was a manager at the Waterfont Resort. She not only did not charge us for the extra guest - Lara - who had spent the night with us but she also picked up Lara's taxi fare home the second night when it was again raining very hard.
From our limited experience with Congolese, they seem to be very outgoing.
Always, always, always carry an umbrella with even if there is not a cloud in the sky.
Do not ever drive after dark in unfamiliar places.
Do not ever attempt to sit in the backseat of a vehicle going up and down winding mountain roads while grading papers as carsickness is sure to ensue. Ask Sheila!
Akagera National Park
Two weeks after our Lake Kivu-Gisengyi trip, we headed east to Akagera National Park. The park is a comfortable two-
and-a-half hour drive from our place in Kigali. It borders Tanzania and is one of Africa's oldest national parks, opening in 1934. The park covers more than 1000 square kilometers. To the north, there are low-lying grasslands and savannah plains. To the west are rolling hills and valleys that are more typical of the Rwandan countryside. To the east are protected wetlands where the Akagera River feeds into lakes, marshes, and papyrus swamps. While its wildlife is not quite on par with other wildlife parks in East Africa, there is plenty to see on an Akagera safari. In fact, the park is home to over 8,000 large animals.
In October, five of us Fulbrighters booked the Ruzizi Tented Lodge for two nights. There was a special promotion: one night at full price and the second night at half price. The lodge is located on Lake Ihema, which is Rwanda's second largest lake. There are only seven tents, and when we note "tents," we are not talking your average camper tents. These tents are at the end of boardwalks and come equipped with their own en-suite bathrooms with hot solar-powered water, a dressing area, comfy queen-sized or double beds, and private patios with magnificent views of the lake, which teems with crocodiles and hippos. The views are even more spectacular in the communal deck areas that have tables and chairs and an outside fire pit that is lit after sunset when the temps drop and there is a chill in the night air.
We left around 8 a.m. and were in the park at 10:30 a.m. ready to do a self-drive tour in our Rav4 (not a 4-wheel drive vehicle and during the rainy season, not having one is a challenge on the park's unpaved trails). After checking in, we exited the lodge (which had an an electrically-charged grill of wires on the road to keep the animals out) and followed the Lake Shore trail. Every so often, in the dense vegetation, we sighted blue and black flags. It was only when we read our Akagera Park Guidebook that we learned what these were. From 2013 to 2015, 1,000 of these flags were installed in the park to attract tsetse flies. The dark blue/black color of the flags as well as the smell of cow urine placed in a bottle at each flag attract the tsetses. The flags also attract elephants which demolish them as well as any flora in their path. The flags are sprayed with an insecticide which affects the tsetses when they land on the fabric. We had our own encounters with these insects whenever we stopped and rolled down our windows to snap photos. Unfortunately, those of us wearing dark colored shirts were most vulnerable to the attacks. Ask Mark!
It was worth it to fight the tsetses when we came upon baboons of all sizes, impalas, duikers, warthogs, waterbucks, and topis. The highlight of our first day on safari was on our return to the lodge. We spotted a bull elephant in the bushes right next to the trail. We were later informed that this was probably Mutware (the Chief), a 38-year-old rogue elephant with a damaged tusk that has a reputation for attacking cars. When he came charging out of the forest flapping his ears (a sign of aggression), we quickly high-tailed it as this was a tad too close for comfort.
That evening back at the resort, we sat by the fire pit and scarfed down a 3-course gourmet meal and hit the sack around 10:30 p.m. We were soothed to sleep by the sounds of the vervet monkeys, the hippo groans and huffs (puffs and blows when they come up for air), buff-spotted woodpeckers, and the numerous waterbirds that frequent Lake Ihema, like the African eagle and the basket weaver birds.
We woke up the next morning and were greeted by a vervet monkey at the end of the boardwalk. The next day on safari was even more eventful. The original plan was to head north to the low-lying grasslands and savannah plains to see if we could spot lions, zebras, buffaloes, and giraffes. The rains came down hard and created rivulets in the trail, and at one point across the shore trail, there was a rushing river. We backtracked and cut across the park to the west, but that road, too, became impassable. Our vehicle, which we had named Frankie (It's androgynous and Mark's a Frank Sinatra aficionado!) was struggling with the ruts, the boulders, the mud, the median of tall grass, and the deep puddles of water. Frankie's undercarriage scraped and groaned violently going over boulders as the vehicle careened up and down the Mutumba Hills. Four hours into our trip and many miles to go before reaching the Mohana Plain, we took a vote and the majority vetoed continuing on this treacherous path. Of course, this also meant returning the same way we came! At several points, the four passengers broke the park rules about getting out of the car and we walked so as to lighten Frankie's load as s/he trudged back over the hazards we had previously traveled. We had seen cape buffaloes and zebras but no giraffes or lions at this point.
We reached safer and dryer grounds to the east and were rewarded with a threesome of giraffes in the distance munching on the leaves in tall trees. A short while later, a parade of twelve elephants, four of whom were babies crossed our path. Fortunately, one of us had read the guidebook from cover to cover the night before and knew exactly what to do when the female elephants stared straight at us and began flapping their ears and moving their heads and trunks from side to side. "Retreat!," says the book and retreat we did. We kept backing the car up and waited for about 20 minutes till the entire parade crossed the road and lumbered off into the forest.
This was a memorable trip even though we didn't see any lions. By the way, there are only 14 total lions in the park today counting the birth of seven cubs recently. They are the first cubs to be born in Rwanda after the reintroduction of the animals in 2015.
The following slideshow includes photos by Lara Gooding, our Fulbright colleague, friend, fellow Akagera explorer, and fine photographer. Place your cursor over the photo for information on the animals. Enjoy!
It was difficult to leave this idyllic place and return to the city. Two and a half hours into our trip back, we had not seen signs of Kigali. You can imagine our shock and disbelief when we realized we had made a wrong turn at a roundabout and instead of going west, we had gone north - 2 hours out of our way!! Before we knew it, we had reached the border crossing and had entered Uganda! A story for another day!
Do you have any memorable animal stories you would like to share with our readers? Why was the experience unforgettable? Suggestions to offer about any information in this post? Please comment and click here to contact us directly and/or receive future posts.