King of the Bongo

tea plantation in Nyungwe forest

One of our New Year Resolutions was to get out of Kigali more often - said and done - we, Joy, Alex and me, set off to Nyungwe National Park last weekend. Someone said to me before I came to Rwanda that in every direction from Kigali one would reach a border in more or less 2 hours and so far this held true. To get to the southwestern part of the country however, its actually quite a bit longer, 5 hours to Cyangugu, at the southern tip of Lake Kivu and the congolese border, and just a little less to our destination: the biggest stretch of rain forest in East Africa famous for its incredible biodiversity and lots of little kings of the bongo. In fact, to see the monkeys you didn't even have to leave the car - unless you wanted to take pictures. The road leads straight through the forest and the little beasts hang out at the roadside, seems they like either cars or their smell. Can't be people as they are not habituated.



Unfortunately nothing in Rwanda comes for free so entry to the park and a 1 hour stroll through the forest cost us about $50 and somehow we didn't feel like going back the next day for another walk and pay again. I would have also prefered to just walk around, smell, see for myself but nope, not even that. Our friendly guide was right there for us, helping to stretch a circle walk of half an hour to an hour by stopping at every plant and tree with their latin names right at hand.



That's how excited Joy and me were!










I am scrolling up and down the pictures to find one that could kind of show it all but its quite hard, to you they'd probably look like pictures from any god damn forest. And somehow we have more of the tea plantation where we went the next day anyway. Over night we stayed in a little lodge where they made a little camp fire just for us. That was nice - only the guitar was missing - and so the evening passed with each of us starring into the fire wrapped in our own thoughts.


"wenn die Nase juckt, dann juckt se!" oder "Frau am Abgrund"













Joy and Alex in the tea plantation

Meanwhile in Kigali life has become quite busy as we are running up to our big meeting beginning of Feb. The rain still hasn't stopped even though it was supposed to be the shorter rainy season - I think the long one starts in February... and our roof isnt't waterproof, its still dripping right on Liz' bed and that does not make her happy!! But getting it investigated or even repaired turns out to be a neverending story with which I am not going to bore you. What else can I tell you, yes, I finally made up my mind and bought a moto. On the road again? Not quite as I got the gaz/oil mix wrong and for the moment its nicely parked in front of my house and wouldn't start...but Liz is also going to buy a car...nice!
So maybe more on new road adventures the next time round!