The Gorerilla, or, Gore in the Mist

This post has been a little bit in coming, so I'll try to make it short and sweet. After about an hour and a half flight, we got into Kigali late on Friday night. Like a lot of small regional airports (and, apparently, African capitals), there was simply a set of stairs wheeled up to our plane, a guy vaguely gesturing across the tarmac to arrivals and a decidedly uninterested man furiously stamping passports. We bartered with a taxi (which for some reason is pretty hard in Rwanda), checked into our hotel, had an incredible French dinner, spent about thirty minutes trying to find the hottest bar in Kigali (it was a patio with like 4 people) and called it a night.

The next morning we collected our gorilla tracking permits (our $500 gorilla tracking permits), decided to ditch our prearranged $200 transport, grabbed some baguettes and fromage and hit the road out to Parc Nacional de Volcans. First stop was a gorgeous two hour bus ride out to Ruhengeri, through the rolling hills and farmland that dominate most of Rwanda. An important tip: do not be the last people to board a bus, you will inevitably end up in the terrible seats that fold down into the aisle, instead, wait 10 minutes for the next one. The taxi's in Ruhengeri once again didn't really understand bartering, so we found ourselves in a 12 seat minibus crammed with about 25 folks (though no chickens, nicely) for the twenty minute trip to Kinigi. This time it was the motorbike taxis that didn't want to negotiate, so we set off the 3km to the hotel on foot. Unfortunately the rain didn't want to negotiate with us either, so about halfway we caved, paid 75 cents and got a lift the rest of the way.

The Kinigi Guest House is really beautiful and set just outside the national park. There are mist covered green hills running to the horizon interrupted by about five huge volcanoes which mark the borders between Rwanda, Uganda and DR Congo (pop quiz: how many lies are inherent in the name "Democratic Republic of Congo"?). Unfortunately, from the hotel you still need a 4x4 to get to the trailheads, and a taxi guy quoted us $80 for the trip. This seemed absurd and no sooner had we hung up the phone than he called back. It seemed that finally someone understood how to negotiate, but no, he just wanted to know if now we were ready to book the next day for $80. We told him we were going to find a better deal and hung up. And five minutes later, he called back, but still wouldn't budge from his $80 offer. It was ridiculous.. so seriously, if you are a tourist this is why you have to barter (or it inflates prices for everyone) and if you are a Rwandan, get with the program, eh (turns out about the only thing you could barter for in Rwanda was the foreign exchange rates which is ass backwards). In the end, we split a 4x4 with some Brits and paid $10 each.

Sunday morning we got up nice and early, met our car and guide, said goodbye to anything resembling clean clothes and headed into the park. The hike itself was pretty full on, most of the time nothing more than a six inch trail trampled through dense rainforest, stinging nettles and bamboo forests. When we did get a bit of a view, it honestly looked like something out of a movie where there is first a wide shot of jungle covered slopes then it zooms into these eight tiny dots that turn out to people (us!) trekking. Very very cool.

After about two hours we caught up with the trackers who, umm, track the gorillas every day. We dropped our packs, hiked up a hill and in a little clearing were the 15 gorillas of the Amhora family. Two or three were hanging out and sleeping, the adolescents were playing were eachother, mothers were grooming their babies and the silverbacks were just keeping an eye on everything. The whole experience was awesome, one of the most exciting, and authentic, encounters I have ever had with wildlife. You're only allowed one hour with, so we watched as they wandered around, thumped their chests, spun on vines, ate bamboo and made funny faces at us. They were quite spectacular, it was hard to look at them and not see similarities with humans.

After the gorillas we made the mistake of telling the guides that we wanted a good hike, thinking maybe we could get to the top of one of the volcanoes. Turns out, the guide took this as a personal challenge, turned off the little path there was and proceeded to march us through the jungle, pulling ourselves up hills with vines and crawling on our hands and knees under bamboo. It was all fun and games until I got ants in my pants... fire ants. Eventually we made it back, changed out of our absolutely filthy clothes and hopped the bus back to Kigali.

Monday was our last day in Rwanda and we spent the morning at their genocide memorial. As far as genocide memorials go, its pretty well done but I'm honestly pretty much done visiting those types of things. The genocide in Rwanda had a particularly nasty touch, with neighbors butchering eachother with machetes which, to me at least, is a different type of evil than just having soldiers shoot or gas people. We spent the afternoon riding around on mototaxis (they seemed more interested in haggling) and trying to find things to do in Kigali (hint: there is not a lot). Had a few beers, had a good dinner overlooking the city and then got up at 2:45am to catch our 5am flight back to Nairobi.

-The Gorerilla