Rwanda: Musanze (Mountain Gorillas)

The main event for this part of our holiday was trekking the mountain gorillas in the misty hills of Rwanda, near a small town called Musanze. On our way to Musanze, we visited the genocide memorial, which was quite the eye opener, considering the genocide in Rwanda was only 19 years ago. Horrific to think about how such an event can occur in the modern era in which we live.

Anyway, the main event – the Gorillas. The group was split into two for trekking activities over two days. Amanda and I were in the first group, meaning we tracked the gorillas yesterday (25^th) rather than today (26^th). Our group of 5 was joined by a couple from South Africa and appointed a guide. Our guide informed us that we were going to be going to the biggest family of Mountain Gorillas in Rwanda, the Anahoro, which has five Silverbacks, several Black Backs, juveniles and babies – family size of about 24 in total.

We set off, first in a car, and then a walk, and the weather wasn't kind, with low lying mist/fog reducing visibility to about, 10m and rain. Fortunately by the time we got out of the car to start our trek, the weather had cleared up a little. Our trek took us predominantly uphill for about two hours, the first hour of the trek, the path was very, very muddy, with mud up to about a foot deep in places. The next hour, we traversed fields of stinging nettle which we learnt pretty quickly could still get our legs through our mud stained trousers.

All the mud and all the nettles were well worth the trouble when we arrived. The experience we had was nothing short of sensational. The family of gorillas seemed to care little of our presence, which at times was within a metre or two of the gorillas, and played and ate while we took lots of photos and videos. The babies would play with each other, climbing trees and jumping onto their parents from the tree, tackling each other in a big rollie-pollie down the mountain. Meanwhile, the big silverbacks were keeping a watchful eye on all the activities as well as us. The leader beat his barrel like chest a few times to assert his dominance, which produced a very deep drumming noise that I can't really describe sufficiently to capture its impact.

After a little over an hour of observation and photos, it was time to go. The way down was a little easier as the sun had come out and dried the path, just a little bit but enough to help progress. At the end of the trek, our shoes were unrecognisable from the mud coating they had and our pants were covered in mud up to our knees. Our legs and hands were stinging from the nettles but it was all worth it because it was an experience like no other I've ever had (or possibly ever likely to experience again).

Uganda: Kampala – Kibale NP – Queen Elizabeth NP – Kabale

We left our campsite in Eldoret (Kenya) early, heading for the border crossing to Uganda. When we got to within 4km of the border the queue to cross the border for the trucks started. Fortunately, we didn't have to wait in that queue, which our guide informed us can take 3-4 days to clear! Progress across the border was uneventful, although one of our group got in trouble for taking photos of the customs building.

The rest of the day was spent in the bus/truck driving through Uganda to our campsite in the outskirts of the capital of Uganda, Kampala. Compared to Kenya, the roads are much, much better in Uganda, the land is generally greener, with many banana and tea plantations amongst the green fields of trees and bushlands. Progress isn't as slow as Kenya but we rarely get to country's speed limit of 100km/h. It rained most of the afternoon but fortunately our camp for the night, called “Red Chilli” gave us the option to upgrade to dorm style accommodation, rather than putting up the tent, for a whopping $3 upgrade fee, which basically everyone opted for. The camp also had a bar with free wifi, which worked intermittently and got worse when many people were using. I should mention that beers are around $2 AUD for long neck, full strength beer. The Kenyan beer of choice is Tusker (4.2%), while the Ugandan beer, Nile Special, packs a little more punch (5.6%).

The next day was another day in the bus, as we headed for the Kibale National Park, west of Kampala toward Rwanda. Fortunately it wasn't raining for most of today, although it was a little overcast and rained a bit later on. More rolling hillsides covered in tea plantations, towns with shanty buildings and far too many speed bumps and mercifully flat roads were the order of the day. Another couple of Ugandan beers were sampled at the bar that night, which overlooked the lush green rolling hills of Uganda, just outside Fort Portal, mostly covered in tea plantations. On offer were Eagle Extra (6.5%) and Bell (4.0%). The camp showers were also open air, which you could stand in and see out over the hillside, which were nice (especially as they had hot water).

The following day the group was divided into two, with one lot people going off to trek for chimpanzees in the Kibale National Forest, while the other got to have a bit of a sleep in before heading for a 2 hour walking tour around some tea plantations, some local houses and the crater lake that were all located nearby our camp. In the afternoon, the groups swapped. We were in the afternoon group to trek the chimps and after hearing good stories from the morning group, were excited and expecting so see the chimps that afternoon. We set off on foot around 1:30pm to a very quiet, very humid forest walk in the direction that the last group had left the chimps. However, luck was not on our side – we walked til after 5pm, trekking up and down hills, over bushes, through mud, across rivers and under branches but did not find any chimps. We left the forest most despondent, completely covered in sweat and exhausted. It was an early night that night.

Fortunately, our guide was able to organise for our group to go back early to the chimps the next day and try again – even the rangers were disappointed that they couldn't find them for us. So we got up early (5:30am) and headed back to the forest. Fortunately, this time it didn't take us long to find the chimps – just shy of 30mins trekking. It took a while to get the right setting on the camera because of the low lighting but eventually got some good photos as we followed the chimps through the forest. At one stage, our guide spotted an elephant, which Amanda and I were able to look at through the binoculars, before the elephant turned and headed for our group, at which point we were told to run the opposite direction, and our guide cocked his assault rifle and let two rounds off into the air to scare the elephant away. It was all very exciting, especially considering the disappointment of the previous day. We continued to track the chimps for about 2.5hours in total before heading back to camp, getting the others and heading for Queen Elizabeth National Park, which was to be our home for a night.

Upon arrival at QENP, we had a two hour boat ride around one of the lakes – Lake Edward, along with our tour groups. QENP is known for its elephant and hippo populations and during our cruise, we observed plentiful numbers of both, along with a variety of birds, water buffalo, baboons, crocs and deer. At this point, I've already taken over 700 photos. After the boat ride, we drove to our campsite for the night, where most people upgraded to walk in rooms with hot showers and real beds, but Amanda and I stuck to our tent, instead indulging by taking several of the Intrepid supplied camp mattresses to make our tent more comfortable.

The next day, we awoke and departed camp for Kabale. Most of the day was spent in the truck on pretty poor roads, which made the going very slow – especially as a lot of the roads weren't even bitumen. At one point, our truck failed to make it up one of the steeper muddy road hills, with the whole truck finishing on a 40 degree angle to the road as a result of some back end wheel spin crab crawling. We were stuck for about an hour until the driver decided he wanted another shot at it, threw some dry material under the wheels and gave it a solid dose of the loud pedal. Successfully getting us up the hill. We were supposed to stay down by a lake tonight but due to the rains, the roads were inaccessible for not only our truck but also smaller 4wd vehicles. Instead, we camped in town at Cepha's Inn, which had nice grass to pitch our tents, a bar and free wifi.

We were up early the day for our trip to the Rwandan border, from tomorrow, our group will be broken up into smaller groups to begin our tracking of the mountain gorillas in Rwanda. So that's it for Uganda (for now), next update from/about Rwanda.

Kenya: Nairobi - Lake Nakuru - Eldoret

We met our group last night, which consists of 15 people, mostly Aussies and mostly female. This will be our group for the next 16 days, although one girl is continuing with us all the way to Victoria Falls and another couple is continuing on to Zanzibar.

Day 1 we left Nairobi around 7:30am on our overland tour bus, with our guide, Albert, our driver John and our cook Albert (Snr – although not related). Once clearing the city, we headed for our first stop – a look out over the Rift Valley. We stopped only briefly to take some photos, being harassed by some local flogging their wares.

Next stop was an orphanage in a small town called Gil Gil. We stopped here as the Intrepid Foundation is involved in giving back to the community so we spent some time listing to how the orphanage was set up, how the children came to be there and about different ways we can help keep the orphanage running (i.e. sale pitch for more cash). The ophans took us all around, showing us their beds, where they did their homework, where they played and, of course, the beaded jewellery they had for sale.

After the orphanage, we drove about an hour to the town of Nakuru. Here we ate some lunch down by Lake Nakuru, which is also our camp site for the night. We were all shown how to put up our tents and then got some time to chill out. Whilst having lunch, we had our first encounter with the wildlife – a cheeky baboon ran right into the middle of our lunch circle and snatched a sandwich one of the girls was eating. He was quickly shooed away by a park ranger but we had a good laugh. A little later on, another monkey snuck into our food prep room and took off with half a loaf of bread.

After lunch & some down time, we went on our first “safari” in the Lake Nakuru area nearby the camp site. It wasn't long before we spotted water buffalo, zebra, impala (like a gazelle), water bucks, guinea foul and even a couple of white rhinos, all just out having a graze in the grass and wet lands surrounding the lake. Oh yeah, and plenty of baboons – they were everywhere!

That night in camp, we spotted and heard several animals loitering about the campsite. During the night we had quite a lot of water buffalo in and around the camp but no damage (mainly thanks to the ranger who moved them on!).

The next morning we awoke early to go on another game drive around the lake, but in the opposite direction to the previous evening. Again, we had some luck with our animal spotting, this time getting a glimpse of two hippos (although too far away to get a good photo, even with the zoom lens), a lioness (which we nearly missed as she was very, very well blended into the grasslands, more white rhino, a rarer black rhino and a giraffe. Lots more photos, lots more baboons, impalas and water bucks later and we were back at camp. We finished packing our tents (we had previously emptied their contents to ensure the baboons didn't get in and steal anything) and hit the road, stopping briefly in Nakuru to pick up suppiles, heading for another camp site just out of Eldoret.

Eldoret is still in Kenya and our campsite was a bit more deluxe than the night before. Not only did it have hot water and proper western toilets (with TP and soap) but it also had a really funky bar, where the tour group sat back and enjoyed several local beers called Tuskers. Shortly after arriving at camp and getting our tents up, we had a bit of rain, which made the camp (and our bus) quite muddy, but nothing was going to damper our spirits with cold beer and warm showers on offer.

Progress between cities in Kenya is slow going, with a lot of road works, detours, speedbumps, heavy traffic and generally ordinary roads. Distances of 150km take far longer than you might think, which means we spend a fair bit of time in our tour bus, which is a customised Mercedes Benz truck, that has had its back section custom build to seat 24 people, each with a locker, store tents and other camping gear underneath the passenger cabin on one side and food, gas bottles, water tanks and the like under the passenger cabin on the other side. It's pretty basic inside but comfy enough when doing distance. We have a charging station so we can keep our music players, laptops and cameras all charged whilst on the move.

Next update from across the border in Uganda.

Kenya - Pre-tour

After 15 hours in the air and five hours in airports, we arrived in Nairobi, Kenya. Happily, I can report that our shrink wrapped luggage also arrived without drama. Nairobi is five hours behind Perth and one hour in front of Johannesburg. We were picked up by our hotel, the Crowne Plaza Nairobi. We had a swim, downed a drink or two and got some in-room dining before passing out for the night around 8-8:30pm (1-1:30am Perth time).

Waking up in Kenya, we had no official plans for the day. At 6pm, we were due to meet our Intrepid group for the first part of our tour (our Gorilla trek), but that was the only planned event for the day.

We consulted with the hotel's concierge who recommended we go to the David Shedrick Wilderness Trust, which is a group that cares for orphaned elephants (and rhino) and then onto a Giraffe Centre. We had a hotel car take us around, the first stop being the elephant orphanage. Quite a few other people had the same idea as there was already a crowd gathered despite it being 45 mins before opening.

We were led to a large roped area where we waited for the elephants to come to. Scattered around the area were large bottles of milk and some green foliage. At 11am, some workers emerged from the nearby bushes with about 12 baby elephants in tow. The elephants obviously knew what was happening because the picked up speed and headed for the milk bottles, which the workers helped them to drink from. They were very cute. After drinking, the trainers encouraged them over to the ropes where the public got an opportunity to touch and pat the elephants. Other elephants played with soccer balls while one of the workers explained how each of the elephants came to the orphanage (quite a few found down wells!). Another group of slightly older elephants came in after the babies – about a further 11 to repeat the process.

We left the elephant orphanage and headed for the giraffe centre, which wasn't too far away. Here there was an elevated viewing platform from which you could feed giraffes, what I can only best describe as kitty litter pellets (obviously food of some description). The giraffes have really long tongues, which are quite soft and not as slimy as you might think. They were generally very timid (but hungry!) animals, although there was warning signs instructing you to watch for headbutts! We didn't stay here long as we quickly ran out of food for them and were in need of food for ourselves. We headed back to the hotel for some lunch, checkout and transfer to the hotel were we are meeting the tour group at.

We have our group meeting at 6pm tonight, which it looks like it'll actually be a meeting for four different tours. Next update when we can from somewhere into our tour!

Vaccines and Visas

Today is ten days until we leave for Africa. Dave and I are very excited and are counting down the days. This year has already gone very quickly and since 2013 kicked over we have been focusing on getting ready for our trip. This included getting updated passport photos for visas, booking flights & accommodation and  and yet more vaccinations. Vaccinations have come in the form of many needles and some tablets. Needless to say that some have been fine while others have made me, in particular, quite unwell. Easily the worst was the Typhoid tablets, which saw my accomplishments for a whole day being to make it from the bed to the couch.

Fortunately most of our visas we can obtain on arrival into most of the countries we are visiting but a couple we needed to take care of before we left, which has also kept us busy. For Rwanda, you require an invitation letter to present to border control that gives you permission to buy a visa to enter the country. For Tanzania, you need a normal visitors visa, which, fortunately, we have a consulate here in Perth to be able to obtain one from.

We've had a practice pack, which went alright but resulted in us going back to the shops for yet more stuff to fit in. Dave has also been busy breaking (he tell's me he's fixing but I'm not so sure) the reticulation so that while we are away the lawn and plants can get regular watering.

Other than that, we have to convert some dollars into USD to take with us and pack properly and then we should be good to go. Next update from somewhere in the African continent!