Rwanda Day 1: Travel to the Rainforest

Our first full day in Rwanda was today. We spent most of the day traveling South, from Kigali to the rainforest at Nyungwe National Park. It was a six hour drive, so we got to see quite a bit of the Rwandan countryside. It's a small country (about the size of Maryland, I think -- one of the states up there), but it's known as the "Land of 1000 Hills." The scenery did not disappoint, as we drove through hill after hill of gorgeous green trees and plantations. The plantations were mostly tea, pineapple, rice, and banana. They eat lots of bananas, but many of them are also fermented to make banana beer.

About half way there, we were able to stop in Butare for lunch. Butare is known as the education center of the country, due to the four universities there. We first visited the National Museum of history, where we learned about both ancient and modern history and culture. It was very interesting; I particularly liked the section on "pre-historic divination." They explained that early Rwandans were pretty superstitious and believed in psychics, and one common way of telling the future was by melting two balls of butter together. How they melted would tell you your future (watch out for the butter Grim!!).

After the museum, we were finally able to try African food! So far our cooks have made us delicious meals, but they were always "Western" things. So we tried an African food buffet today. It was surprisingly familiar, mostly, with stuff like beef chunks and fried chicken, but there were also relatively new things, such as plantain and banana chips, along with a huge bowl of sliced avocados. It was pretty yummy. I had noticed lots of avocado trees lining the streets in Kigali, and our new guide (Andrew) said that they are free for anyone to pick and eat.

We drove through Butare, so I have posted a picture below, in case you're curious to see what a typical African city looks like. It was pretty representative, from what I've seen. Of course, I'm sure smaller villages are quite different.

After Butare we started to get to higher hills, and eventually we drove through part of the rainforest. It was so beautiful! We found out that this ridge of hills/mountains is the African continental divide.

We then got to our hotel, which is a magnificent lodge on the top of a mountain, with individual villas for our rooms. The hotel balconies look out at Lake Kivu. As I'm writing this, there's a man setting up a fire in the fireplace of my private living room. He said that after dinner he'll bring me two hot water bottles, for my neck and back. I have to admit that between sleeping in a rain-soaked tent versus sleeping in a swanky private villa with my own fireplace, I'll pick Option B.

Tomorrow we get up at 4:00 am to find some rainforest chimpanzees!