After spending four days at Akagera Park we headed for Kigali. Now all African cities so far have been the same, dirty, traffic and loads of people everywhere, however, Kigali is different. This city is clean, peaceful and welcoming. Not only Kigali but we have found the whole of Rwanda like this. The people are the friendliest people we have met so far and extremely helpful.

Anyway we arrived in Kigali and I took Maggie straight to the workshop for some TLC and a service. The mechanic – Mahmud, came highly recommended by Bryan. So while Maggie was being fixed we thought we would do some research on the gorillas and see if we could make a booking. The tour operator informed us that the next available booking would be in a week’s time- I was not happy with this and asked where the main office was.

Luckily I did this as they were able to book us in for the next day due to a cancellation- hooray. So we went to pick Maggie up- bad news financially and more repairs are needed L Oh well we then headed for Volcanoes National park, apparently 2 hours away, but Maggie was shaking so much I didn’t go over 50km/hour and it took us over 3 hours.

Casper- an overlander friend we keep bumping into, advised us on the campsite and what is needed for the hike. I was very nervous for this strenuous hike as I have been sitting on my arse for awhile now and totally unfit. We were warned that the hike can be up to 6 hours- eek!

In the end the hike was a piece of cake and only took about an hour or so to get to the gorillas. It was great to witness these human like creature in the wild. They are really spectacular to see. There was even a newborn that was the cutest thing ever. You are only allowed to stay with the gorillas for an hour, however due to a beehive close by and bees starting to attack me and the tracker our hour was cut short.

On the way back from the Gorillas a contact came through to visit the Sowarthe tea plantation. A friend of a friend managers it. So we thought why not and headed for the hills. Ah I was so glad we made this detour, it was so beautiful driving through endless hills of different shades of green. A night was spent up on the hill with a tea factory tour in the morning.

Back to Kigali, some more fixing to Maggie was needed. This time my bushers had warn away and was causing all the wobbling. All sorted now. While Maggie was being repaired I went to visit the Ministry of Education and their OLPC project. The president of Rwanda has done a great job and is a firm believer in education and cleanliness. What a great guy.

The first school that I visited was a bit disappointing, as the correct training had obviously not been done and the teacher had no clue. The laptops weren’t charged up before the lesson and there were cables running everywhere, not a good idea for children to be messing around with plug points etc.

However it was great to see the difference between the two schools we visited, as the second school was a deaf school. These children were amazing and obviously have spent time on the laptops and know how they work. The teacher had been trained and was incredible with the students. It was so nice and quite in the classroom, I was very jealous.

So after long hours of meetings and visits to school it was time to bid farewell. One last visit to Akagera Park to do some washing and say goodbye to Bryan. Now we will head North through the park to Uganda.

After the parks we headed to Arusha, tried to stock up on supplies and made our way to Rwanda. We had 980km to the border and nowhere really to stay. So after a few nights of staying in guest houses we finally made it. Oh hand on let me tell you about one little detour we made before the border. We saw that there was a campsite in a national park before the border called Bharamula. It was only 40km off the main road so figured we would head there for the night and try made the border the following morning nice and early.

What a weird little village, old buildings from early 1900’s and friendly people around. We had no clue what this town was about until the following morning. As we were heading out we had guards waxing goodbye with one hand and the other hand holding onto a guy in handcuffs. Weird? Until we realised all the people around where in bright orange overalls. Ah the penny dropped and we realised that this was a convict town. How funny that we stayed there, I should have dropped Justine off J

So through the border into Rwanda hassle free. Driving along we decided to stop on the side of the road to have some lunch. A Rwandan on the other side of the road could not stop staring at us and walked into the road and a bus came flying around the corner and hit him. I will never be able to get that image out of my head. It was awful.

Can you believe it he woke up and tried standing and all along still staring at us and smiling. I felt awful. I got through the crowds and was able to check on him. He was bleeding out of his one eye so I reckon he has some sort of head trauma. The bus driver said they would go to the police and sort it all out. We didn’t really know what to do- do we follow to the police or what?

We eventually decided the best would be not to get involved and drove off with a sick feeling in our stomachs.

We headed straight for Akagera National Park, the closest place to stay. We were told that camping was US20 so were happy with that. Until all the other fees on top of that amounted to US80. We decided to try our luck at the hotel, where Justine sweet talked the manager to give us a room for US50. Yay.

Mmmm nowhere to cook our steaks though. The receptionist was very helpful and suggested we speak to one of the managers of the park who was busy playing tennis and maybe he would allow us to BBQ at the offices.

It worked so off we went to the offices and started cooking. We had many eyes on us wondering what we were doing. The big boss was called and told about the strange people. The parks project manager- Bryan came to talk to us and invited us into his home to eat our cooked dinner.

Four days later he still hasn’t managed to get rid of us! He has shown us around his park and telling us of all the great ideas to get the park up and running again. It is a real shame that the park took such a hit during the genocide, it has such potential.

So anyone coming to Rwanda in the near future be warned: You must visit Akagera as it will be the place to be!