I'm of an age when you mention the name Kigali I have images in my head that would keep you awake at night. I can remember watching the scenes from the 1994 Genocide and being numbed by the horror of it all.
I never in my wildest moments thought that I would ever go to Kigali, and certainly never thought that less than 20 years on would be one of the safest cities in Africa. So this will be a surreal experience, and one I'm looking forward to with excitement and trepidation.
Maybe it will just be a boring city, or maybe it will be vibrant and exciting. I don't really know what to expect and having been out in the countryside for a while may take a little getting used to .
I've booked a room in The Guest Lux guest house - according to trip advisor it should be good. Ahhhh trip advisor, what did we do without you.
I guess we will have to visit the genocide memorial - situated on the graves of 250,000 people. That's more than the population of Aberdeen. Having visited Auschwitz last year, this I'm sure will be equally traumatic, but you can't ignore it.
Monday, 20 August 2012
Nyungwe Forest
From the excitement of the Gorilla trekking we are heading for some peace and quiet and luxury and hopefully wine.
I'm not sure I've mentioned it before, but this is actually our honeymoon, although we did get married before last xmas.
So we thought this looked like a nice spot for a few days.
Nyungwe Forest Lodge is situated, funnily enough,in the Nyungwe Forest; which has been described as one of the most important areas of bio-diversity left in Africa. There are more types of primate here than you could shake a stick at (and perhaps have one shaken back at you) and so many birds you'll need bigger binoculars.
So it looks like a great place to hang around the hotel pool and have a massage.
I'm not sure I've mentioned it before, but this is actually our honeymoon, although we did get married before last xmas.
So we thought this looked like a nice spot for a few days.
Nyungwe Forest Lodge is situated, funnily enough,in the Nyungwe Forest; which has been described as one of the most important areas of bio-diversity left in Africa. There are more types of primate here than you could shake a stick at (and perhaps have one shaken back at you) and so many birds you'll need bigger binoculars.
So it looks like a great place to hang around the hotel pool and have a massage.
Gorilla trekking
The main reason for heading to this part of Africa is of course to see the mountain gorillas.
And who could resist?
This part of the trip had the possibility of being the hardest bit to organise. I had read many tales of nightmares dealing with the park authorities in order to get permits and how to pay the fees etc. So I followed the advice in my guidebook Lonely Planet East Africa - and contacted a tour company based in Rwanda.
This turned out to be pretty simple - I e-mailed them, they e-mailed me back with a suggested itinerary and price, I sent them some money, and they did everything else.
Amahoro tours are their name - I've been dealing with Anne. They have been pretty good, despite one small hiccup. They put together the following schedule for us-
2 nights B&B accommodation in their Guest House in Musanze
Gorilla trekking for two people
Basket weaving and banana beer making in a local village
Transport to and from the trail head
Total cost of $790 per person. Ouch. Ohhh that hurts. But at least we got in there before the Rwandan govt increased the cost of the trekking permits from $500 to $750.
And who could resist?
This part of the trip had the possibility of being the hardest bit to organise. I had read many tales of nightmares dealing with the park authorities in order to get permits and how to pay the fees etc. So I followed the advice in my guidebook Lonely Planet East Africa - and contacted a tour company based in Rwanda.
This turned out to be pretty simple - I e-mailed them, they e-mailed me back with a suggested itinerary and price, I sent them some money, and they did everything else.
Amahoro tours are their name - I've been dealing with Anne. They have been pretty good, despite one small hiccup. They put together the following schedule for us-
2 nights B&B accommodation in their Guest House in Musanze
Gorilla trekking for two people
Basket weaving and banana beer making in a local village
Transport to and from the trail head
Total cost of $790 per person. Ouch. Ohhh that hurts. But at least we got in there before the Rwandan govt increased the cost of the trekking permits from $500 to $750.
Thursday, 31 May 2012
Over the border
I've never crossed a border from a country that drives on the left to one that drives on the right, and for some reason this excites me greatly. I just cannot wait to see how the logistics work, and how many chances there are for disaster to strike.
Are the roads like a scalextric crossover?
Glad we've taken the full cover insurance.
My limited experience of African border crossings is very positive, in fact the nicest border personnel I have ever met were in Namibia and Botswana. I have never had a border official in Europe ask me if I enjoyed their country, or tell me to come back soon - all with the biggest smiles you can imagine. This at a place the guide book told me could take all day to transit through - total time for the complete crossing was about ten minutes.
So with this in mind I don't have any real concerns about this crossing - in fact I'm looking forward to it immensely. As we are to visiting Rwanda, despite all the horrors of its recent history.
We will be crossing over the border using the Cyanika crossing - and heading the few miles further south to Musanze (also known as Ruhengeri)
Are the roads like a scalextric crossover?
Glad we've taken the full cover insurance.
My limited experience of African border crossings is very positive, in fact the nicest border personnel I have ever met were in Namibia and Botswana. I have never had a border official in Europe ask me if I enjoyed their country, or tell me to come back soon - all with the biggest smiles you can imagine. This at a place the guide book told me could take all day to transit through - total time for the complete crossing was about ten minutes.
So with this in mind I don't have any real concerns about this crossing - in fact I'm looking forward to it immensely. As we are to visiting Rwanda, despite all the horrors of its recent history.
We will be crossing over the border using the Cyanika crossing - and heading the few miles further south to Musanze (also known as Ruhengeri)
Kibale Forest and the Queen Elizabeth National Park
After seeing the Nile at Murchison Falls we are heading south to the Kibale Forest - 800 sq km of prime African rainforest packed full of chimpanzees. Or so we hope.
We have booked to stay at Primate Lodge Kibale - which is right next to the park visitor centre, so should be good for the various treks that can be done. The people here seem very helpful, despite them apparently losing my deposit - they provided me with two bank account numbers to transfer money to. The one I should have used has letters in the number - and my bank just refuse to deal with this, so I transferred to the other number which didn't have any letters. But that seemed to be the wrong one - but in the end they found it just before I got my bank to try and recoup the loss. Luckily it wasn't for a huge sum - it should be quite simple to do this kind of thing but banks seem to have a habit of making it as hard as they can.
I have tried to contact the Ugandan Wildlife authority to book a chimp tracking trek, but none of the e-mail addresses on their website seems to work, and the phone doesn't get answered. Hopefully we can sort stuff out when we arrive in the park.
We have booked to stay at Primate Lodge Kibale - which is right next to the park visitor centre, so should be good for the various treks that can be done. The people here seem very helpful, despite them apparently losing my deposit - they provided me with two bank account numbers to transfer money to. The one I should have used has letters in the number - and my bank just refuse to deal with this, so I transferred to the other number which didn't have any letters. But that seemed to be the wrong one - but in the end they found it just before I got my bank to try and recoup the loss. Luckily it wasn't for a huge sum - it should be quite simple to do this kind of thing but banks seem to have a habit of making it as hard as they can.
I have tried to contact the Ugandan Wildlife authority to book a chimp tracking trek, but none of the e-mail addresses on their website seems to work, and the phone doesn't get answered. Hopefully we can sort stuff out when we arrive in the park.
After a few days in the forest we drive the short distance to the Queen Elizabeth National Park where we intend camping - nothing booked as I haven't found anywhere on the web to make bookings. This should be the most "safari-like" part of our trip - lots of large mammals to see with the chance of catching the famous tree climbing lions of Ishasha.
The Ishasha area of the park is very close to the DRC, and is not currently open to visitors due to the generally lively state of affairs across the border. I'm hoping things may have calmed down to just "general mayhem" by the time we visit so that we may be able to camp in the area. Probably have to take an armed guard if we do and I cannot see my wife liking that.....
Thursday, 26 April 2012
Entebbe to Murchison
We arrive late into Entebbe airport so we wanted somewhere close by to stay, that would also come and pick us up from the airport. We are going to tired, and probably nervous about the whole arriving in Africa thing - although we've done it before it is still a bit of a culture shock when getting off the plane.
Luckily there are plenty places in Entebbe to stay, and one in particular ticked all our boxes - the Entebbe Zoo!
Well it's not a zoo anymore, but is actually the Ugandan Wildlife Education Centre, which has a good reputation for education and wildlife conservation. They also house and rehabilitate injured or orphaned animals - so from our point of view this seemed like an ideal place to spend our first night. http://www.uwec.ug/ $50 for a night in a banda and an airport pickup. Breakfast extra, but can be taken in their restuarant.
We get our hire car delivered here to us the next morning and we drive north to Kampala - hopefully finding a supermarket on route as we don't really fancy the Kampala traffic.
After Kampala we head further north to the Ziwa rhino sanctuary. http://www.rhinofund.org/index.htm Here we plan to camp for a couple of nights - 25,000 Ugandan shillings pppn, plus a park fee of 20,000 UGs. So about £10 a night pp. Here are the only wild rhino in Uganda, having recently been re-introduced. You can go on tracking trips (about £20 pp).
After Ziwa it should be a nice short drive to Murchison Falls National Park. I think by this stage the tarmac will have run out and we'll be onto the murram :-) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murram#Laterite_and_murram_roads
Hopefully the grader will have been along just before we get there.
Murchison Falls is where the river Nile forces it's way through a narrow gorge, but there is much more to the park than just the river. To the north is savannah like grassland, and to the south is more forest like. Here we have booked into the Red Chili rest camp http://redchillihideaway.com/paraa.htm I'm a bit worried that this might be an overlander kind of place, but it is very close to the park gate so getting into the park in the early morning should be nice and easy.
The guidebooks and Ugandan Wildlife Authority website say that the park is good for spotting lions, so maybe that will make up for only spotting one in Nam/Bots a few years ago. And that was a really poor spot as the lion in question was lying under a bush, 200m away, fast asleep. Although we did get a very good view of his knackers....
Luckily there are plenty places in Entebbe to stay, and one in particular ticked all our boxes - the Entebbe Zoo!
Well it's not a zoo anymore, but is actually the Ugandan Wildlife Education Centre, which has a good reputation for education and wildlife conservation. They also house and rehabilitate injured or orphaned animals - so from our point of view this seemed like an ideal place to spend our first night. http://www.uwec.ug/ $50 for a night in a banda and an airport pickup. Breakfast extra, but can be taken in their restuarant.
We get our hire car delivered here to us the next morning and we drive north to Kampala - hopefully finding a supermarket on route as we don't really fancy the Kampala traffic.
After Kampala we head further north to the Ziwa rhino sanctuary. http://www.rhinofund.org/index.htm Here we plan to camp for a couple of nights - 25,000 Ugandan shillings pppn, plus a park fee of 20,000 UGs. So about £10 a night pp. Here are the only wild rhino in Uganda, having recently been re-introduced. You can go on tracking trips (about £20 pp).
After Ziwa it should be a nice short drive to Murchison Falls National Park. I think by this stage the tarmac will have run out and we'll be onto the murram :-) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murram#Laterite_and_murram_roads
Hopefully the grader will have been along just before we get there.
Murchison Falls is where the river Nile forces it's way through a narrow gorge, but there is much more to the park than just the river. To the north is savannah like grassland, and to the south is more forest like. Here we have booked into the Red Chili rest camp http://redchillihideaway.com/paraa.htm I'm a bit worried that this might be an overlander kind of place, but it is very close to the park gate so getting into the park in the early morning should be nice and easy.
The guidebooks and Ugandan Wildlife Authority website say that the park is good for spotting lions, so maybe that will make up for only spotting one in Nam/Bots a few years ago. And that was a really poor spot as the lion in question was lying under a bush, 200m away, fast asleep. Although we did get a very good view of his knackers....
Where to stay
We would love to do the whole "luxury" safari, but we're not overpaid and underworked bankers, so we are looking to mostly camp, or stay in fairly modest accommodation. However as this is actually our honeymoon, we have added a few nicer hotels into the mix.
There is an enormous range in the price of where to stay at night - some places I have booked are $10-15 per night and others are $500 per night. I still can't quite understand how the economics work, I would imagine that the person who will clean our room at the $500 pn hotel probably doesn't get paid that much in a year. But should you not go to these places because of that, or should you go because the hotel is providing much needed employment?
It's a dilemma and one that we've tried to balance by staying in places that have a reputation of being good employers - at least that is the impression we have got from them, and from the guide books.
We decided to book and pay for as many of the places as possible - again to avoid having to carry too much cash with us, and to take away the "where are we going to stay tonight" worries.
The honeymoon suite?
There are some places where we are just going to turn up and try to find a campsite - I'm hoping this won't lead to this-
There is an enormous range in the price of where to stay at night - some places I have booked are $10-15 per night and others are $500 per night. I still can't quite understand how the economics work, I would imagine that the person who will clean our room at the $500 pn hotel probably doesn't get paid that much in a year. But should you not go to these places because of that, or should you go because the hotel is providing much needed employment?
It's a dilemma and one that we've tried to balance by staying in places that have a reputation of being good employers - at least that is the impression we have got from them, and from the guide books.
We decided to book and pay for as many of the places as possible - again to avoid having to carry too much cash with us, and to take away the "where are we going to stay tonight" worries.
The honeymoon suite?
There are some places where we are just going to turn up and try to find a campsite - I'm hoping this won't lead to this-
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