Day 1 Rwanda

Welcome to the Land of 1,000 Hills

Well right this one down in the record books as our most high-stress trip yet to plan and execute. This trip has been planned since August. It is a celebration of Billy’s and my 30th wedding anniversary! We decided on a safari and then added gorilla trekking in Rwanda. Since the war in Iran broke out, I have rebooked our flights three times, unfortunately resulting in a 15 hour layover in London, but I managed to get it all done.

I handled all the flight rebookings fine ( we were originally booked to fly through Qatar), managed the rebookings of camps putting Rwanda first as I couldn’t get mileage redemption flights into Kenya (our second destination) and when I finally was set with travel logistics and focused on other things, news of an ebola outbreak came across my feed…

I have spent the last ten days reading, researching, reading some more, Googling (yeah, I went down that rabbit hole), reading yet more and then as a family discussing, watching and waiting. In the end we felt like we were going to be safe from ebola as it is not like Covid in its transmission (so they say). We considered canceling but Rwanda had no cases (they actually never have). I actually had booked back up flights to bypass Rwanda all together and just head to Kenya for the safari part of our trip, just in case, but ended up cancelling those two hours before we boarded our flight to Kigali. 

We realize things might change and are as mentally prepared as possible to deal with that. We aren’t foolhardy completely; we also realize this could get uglier quickly, but in the end, we made the decision to move forward with our plans. 

It does feel a bit odd to travel to an area of the world that is suffering from such a horrible disease and go about normal tourist activities but again, Rwanda is fine at this point.

I will be honest in feeling a bit of relief as at check in, we were very clearly the only tourists amongst the 100 or so passengers in line and I was thinking to myself that we were the only fools who hadn’t cancelled, but at the gate, and once on board, there were some other American tourists.

Gorilla trekking has been a dream of mine since studying Anthropology in college. I spent countless hours at the San Diego Zoo working on projects centered around the great apes. I was always struck by the famous women researchers – Goodall, Fossey and Galdikas. When I suggested it to Billy and Jenny, I had initially suggested Uganda as it is much less expensive for the permits but Billy insisted if we were going to do it, it HAD to be in Rwanda- and right about now I am very glad he did!

When trying to plan this trip, the rainy season was a bit of a factor. Did I want rain on safari in Kenya or would I rather it while trekking through the jungle in Rwanda? I had originally been more concerned about rain while trekking in Rwanda and so had put that after Kenya but ultimately flight ability became the deciding factor and the gorillas came first.

Our 8 1/2 hour flight was smooth and our descent into Rwanda was spectacular! The emerald green hills crisscrossed by red dirt roads and rivers of a similar color made it clear we were in equatorial Africa.

The airport arrivals was empty, except for the other tourists almost all the other passengers were connecting. After a quick pass through secondary inspection for the suitcase full of school supplies and soccer balls, we met up with our driver Anderson to start our sightseeing trip around Kigali before heading to Volcanoes National Park.

The traffic was pretty intense but 1/4 mile out we were struck by two things. The first being the ridiculous amount of motorcycles- literally thousands of them, mostly used as mototaxis and almost all electric. The second was how impeccably pristine it was – like not a single piece of garbage anywhere! The country employs people to pick up trash, weed between pavers, deadhead plants and trees, and even sweep up fallen leaves in the gutters and dirt paths alongside the road. Every last Saturday of every month every citizen is expected to clean up their neighborhood. It is unreal. I have never seen a cleaner country.

Anderson drove us around a few neighborhoods of Kigali – both working and the high rent district. We drove past consulates and embassies- including our own; we stopped at the famous Hotel des Mille Collines AKA “Hotel Rwanda” for a coffee and to have a look around; and we toured the Genocide Memorial Museum (very heavy yet very moving).

Once outside of Kigali the traffic lessened but there was still a constant stream of people and school kids walking alongside the road, along with plenty of the mototaxis. 

The climb up into the mountains was fantastic, at one point we were driving along a ridge with fairly dramatic valleys on both sides. The land was heavily cultivated with crops of every kind growing or in the midst of being planted. There were literally hundreds of people hand hoeing their plots of land- not a machine to be seen anywhere.

We arrived at our inn just in time for lunch. It is lovely with lush grounds teeming with bird life, an inviting pool area and a breezy, second story, open-air lanai. The inn was at capacity with mostly Americans and a few Europeans. After lunch, we all crashed for a good two hours.

It gets dark by 6:00 and by 6:30 we were enjoying cocktails in front of the fire before sitting down to a delicious dinner.

It was so sweet because the chef had baked a beautiful cake for Billy which they brought out with the largest sparkler I have ever seen and the entire room serenaded Billy with “Happy Birthday” along with it playing over the speaker.

We really enjoyed the day today! Rwanda is a beautiful country filled with the warmest people built on a strong ethos of resilience derived from the motto, “lest we forget.”