Having my family and friends come to Kigali was an interesting experience. In one way I got to see the city in a different light, and in another way it just confirmed everything that I had already thought about it.
Their first experience in Kigali was the Gisozi Genocide Memorial. Which as I have described before I will not go into again.
Then we went on our trips around the country, ending back in Kigali for 2 nights.
We drove down from Gisenyi semi-early in the morning, so we ended up back in Kigali around lunch time. We checked into our hotel, we stayed at the Mille Colline. Then we headed out to lunch, did Chinese food in order to switch some things up. Not to mention its a good way to get flavorful meat and vegetables here. At the end of lunch I started talking about dinner. They didn't understand that the reason I was talking about dinner is because thats the only next thing to do.
After we ate I did take them around Town a bit. It takes all of about 10 minutes to walk around. I did take them to an art coop, so that should count for something. Other than that, there really isn't much to see, so what else could I do but take them into Nakumatt, essentially a low-grade wallmart(but to us who live here, it is heaven at times)..
And thats about it. For me it was all about being in the hotel, watching TV, and taking a shower. Then the next day came. I brought them to my friends house to see where another person from my group lives, and because they were dog-sitting, and who doesn't like to see dogs..aka I had NOTHING else to do with them. For lunch I took them to a good pizza place. Then at lunch we were already planning what to do for dinner, Indian.
Do you see a trend. I am sad and sorry to tell you this in case you didn't already know. There honestly is not much to do in Kigali. I love it here, but lets be real, as a tourist attraction it doesn't have a lot to offer. There are many restaurants, but other than that, not so much.
Now my parents fully understood why whenever my friends come to the city on the weekends all we do is go out for food, there is nothing else to do.
I'm not saying don't come here, come here. But be prepared.
Saturday, September 5, 2009
Friday, September 4, 2009
Gisenyi
This is next leg of my journey during my break after my second term of eaching..
After gorrila trekking we then continued our journey in Rwanda to Gisenyi, which is on Lake Kivu.
Compared to the drive from Kigali to Musanze, this drive was all knew to me. I got to see another part of Rwanda. To be honest it is on drives like this that one realizes how much love they can have for a country. It really is just that beautiful. The winding roads, the little villages, and the tea plantations are just breath taking.
I was lucky enough to stay at the Serena Lake Kivu. This is essentially like any good resort hotel. It was a vacation, and boy oh boy did I need one.
Lets just sum of the greatness of this place: TV with multiple movie channels, comfy bed, hot water, electricity, wireless internet, and the big one: AC. To be honest my first night there I didn't even know their was AC. Then the next day my mom was in my room and she was like wow you are keeping it really hot in here, and I said what do you mean, how could I make it cooler, and she was then like well you could then turn on the AC. Lets just say I then layed on my bed for who knows how long just feeling the cool air blow over me.HAHA.
Now for my ChemE dorks. I know I have neglected who I am for too long, so lets talk about what really matter, Methane extraction from a lake. Yes that is right folks, in Lake Kivu there is a methane extraction project.
And there is also a huge bottling factory. yes I know this is not strictly ChemE, but I had been deprived for too long, so the littlest thing could make me happy..
Lets just say this helped give me a fix of what I had been missing.. as you all know I am a ChemE crazy girl..haha..
After gorrila trekking we then continued our journey in Rwanda to Gisenyi, which is on Lake Kivu.
Compared to the drive from Kigali to Musanze, this drive was all knew to me. I got to see another part of Rwanda. To be honest it is on drives like this that one realizes how much love they can have for a country. It really is just that beautiful. The winding roads, the little villages, and the tea plantations are just breath taking.
I was lucky enough to stay at the Serena Lake Kivu. This is essentially like any good resort hotel. It was a vacation, and boy oh boy did I need one.
Lets just sum of the greatness of this place: TV with multiple movie channels, comfy bed, hot water, electricity, wireless internet, and the big one: AC. To be honest my first night there I didn't even know their was AC. Then the next day my mom was in my room and she was like wow you are keeping it really hot in here, and I said what do you mean, how could I make it cooler, and she was then like well you could then turn on the AC. Lets just say I then layed on my bed for who knows how long just feeling the cool air blow over me.HAHA.
Now for my ChemE dorks. I know I have neglected who I am for too long, so lets talk about what really matter, Methane extraction from a lake. Yes that is right folks, in Lake Kivu there is a methane extraction project.
And there is also a huge bottling factory. yes I know this is not strictly ChemE, but I had been deprived for too long, so the littlest thing could make me happy..
Lets just say this helped give me a fix of what I had been missing.. as you all know I am a ChemE crazy girl..haha..
Gorillas
I know that it has been a long time, but I'm finally back, and now I have so much to say. This particular story comes from back in July... hope you enjoy
After lunch on Friday we drove up to Ruhengeri(Musanze). We stayed at the Hotel Gorillas. Oh My. So Nice. I had TV and a hot shower. I had forgot how white my skin could be.
Saturday morning. We left at 6.15 to drive up to the national park. Once we arrived at the station we then waited around a bit for everyone to arrive. They then divided us up into groups and brought us to our guides. Our group was the 5 of us and 2 Belgian women. We met our guide, Patience, and he then briefed us on what we were about to experience. Then we all piled back into our cars and drove off. Of the 14 families of gorillas, only 7 are visited by tourists, the others are for research.. Each group goes to a different family. In order to know where they are, there are gorilla trackers that start early in the morning so then they can walkie-talkie our guides so that we can find the gorillas as easily as possible. Before we even started hiking we first had about a 45 minute drive along the bumpiest, rockiest road ever. The scenery was great, the "African massage," not so great. While we were driving we were going through little 'communities.' As our cars drove through all the little children would turn out. Most of the children had little pieces of paper with some sort of gorilla drawing on them. They were trying to sell them to us. Obviously at some point someone must have stopped and bought one, because all the little children would come running when they saw our cars a-coming.
Once we came to the end of the road, we then had about a 15 minute walk to the edge of the park.The entire park is surrounded by a stone wall. Once we climb the wall we are in. Along with us and our guides were two army men sent in case of wild animals, eg buffalo, come at us, since they have guns.
We had about a 45 minute 'walk' to wear the trackers had spied the family of gorillas we were going to see. It was pretty steep. Not a horribly long walk, but the walk was hard-core steep. My first spying of a gorilla came when the young Belgain woman in front of mepointed one out in a tree. Of course we did exactly what we were not supposed to do,point. We continued a little bit, and it ends up that at the base of the tree where we saw our first gorilla was the family of them. We had two juvinile boys wrestling for us. They were pretty good. I would think a few high school boys in the US could learn a thing or two from them on the mats.
In the background was the Silverback, but we couldn't really see him that well because he was just chilling on the ground. To be honest I was a little relieved.. this meant that our group of camera clicking humans was not distrubing him enough.
On second thought this does not really surprise me when you think about how the park works. Every day for an hour they are exposed to crazed tourists, so it must become normal, somehow.
Right before our time was up with the gorillas they switched our postion so we could see from another angle. Thats when we saw a mother. Our guide pointed out the mother and the baby, and honestly my first thought was that I must be an idiot because I really am not seeing anything, but then I realized, that tiny thing laying on the mother, the thing that is about the size of a mini-football is a baby gorilla. Holy cow. It was crazy. Honestly I knew that a baby would be small, but in comparision to the mother it really was shocking.
On the way back down, it took about 20 minutes. We did see how much of climb we had done on the way in though.
SO, the afternoon. After we did gorilla trekking on Saturday we went back to our hotel, took showers, and then had lunch. We then decided to walk around Ruhengeri(Musanze) a little bit. Since I had already been there before I felt comfortable going with my family. I even took them through the market and off the beaten road. Overall I think it was a good time. They really got to experience what being a Muzungu is like, cause 5 of us walking around sure brought out the stares alright.
Now. My HEAVENLY experience. And no I am not mincing words when I use that description. I am pretty sure that I used all the hot water that the hotel had to offer. Gosh, one cannot believe all the dirt that comes off with hot water in comparision with cold water..haha.
Then, Sunday morning we were off to trek gorillas yet again. This time we went to the family with the english translation of a name 'Lucky.' I would try to describe to you how we got to the family, but I honestly do not think that you would believe me if I told you.But here it goes anyway: After walking through a forrest of bambo, we then realized that we were on the edge of a ravine type thing. The gorillas were at the bottom of the ravine. Essentially it required some classy bottom sliding down bushes..haha.. I'm serious.
This hour that we spent with the gorillas was unbelievable. At times we were totally less than the seven meters away. I got some awesome video.
Overall the gorilla trekking was something one could never imagine. I had asked my dad if he ever thought that we would be doing something like this in our lives, but he told me that honestly when he was a boy and he learned about gorillas he never even dreamed that one day he could see them in real life, and not in a zoo. To him it wasn't even something that was dreamable, it just seemed that impossible.
If you ever find yourself in this part of the world, take it from me, it is worth every cent. You will never be able to go to a zoo ever again.
After lunch on Friday we drove up to Ruhengeri(Musanze). We stayed at the Hotel Gorillas. Oh My. So Nice. I had TV and a hot shower. I had forgot how white my skin could be.
Saturday morning. We left at 6.15 to drive up to the national park. Once we arrived at the station we then waited around a bit for everyone to arrive. They then divided us up into groups and brought us to our guides. Our group was the 5 of us and 2 Belgian women. We met our guide, Patience, and he then briefed us on what we were about to experience. Then we all piled back into our cars and drove off. Of the 14 families of gorillas, only 7 are visited by tourists, the others are for research.. Each group goes to a different family. In order to know where they are, there are gorilla trackers that start early in the morning so then they can walkie-talkie our guides so that we can find the gorillas as easily as possible. Before we even started hiking we first had about a 45 minute drive along the bumpiest, rockiest road ever. The scenery was great, the "African massage," not so great. While we were driving we were going through little 'communities.' As our cars drove through all the little children would turn out. Most of the children had little pieces of paper with some sort of gorilla drawing on them. They were trying to sell them to us. Obviously at some point someone must have stopped and bought one, because all the little children would come running when they saw our cars a-coming.
Once we came to the end of the road, we then had about a 15 minute walk to the edge of the park.The entire park is surrounded by a stone wall. Once we climb the wall we are in. Along with us and our guides were two army men sent in case of wild animals, eg buffalo, come at us, since they have guns.
We had about a 45 minute 'walk' to wear the trackers had spied the family of gorillas we were going to see. It was pretty steep. Not a horribly long walk, but the walk was hard-core steep. My first spying of a gorilla came when the young Belgain woman in front of mepointed one out in a tree. Of course we did exactly what we were not supposed to do,point. We continued a little bit, and it ends up that at the base of the tree where we saw our first gorilla was the family of them. We had two juvinile boys wrestling for us. They were pretty good. I would think a few high school boys in the US could learn a thing or two from them on the mats.
In the background was the Silverback, but we couldn't really see him that well because he was just chilling on the ground. To be honest I was a little relieved.. this meant that our group of camera clicking humans was not distrubing him enough.
On second thought this does not really surprise me when you think about how the park works. Every day for an hour they are exposed to crazed tourists, so it must become normal, somehow.
Right before our time was up with the gorillas they switched our postion so we could see from another angle. Thats when we saw a mother. Our guide pointed out the mother and the baby, and honestly my first thought was that I must be an idiot because I really am not seeing anything, but then I realized, that tiny thing laying on the mother, the thing that is about the size of a mini-football is a baby gorilla. Holy cow. It was crazy. Honestly I knew that a baby would be small, but in comparision to the mother it really was shocking.
On the way back down, it took about 20 minutes. We did see how much of climb we had done on the way in though.
SO, the afternoon. After we did gorilla trekking on Saturday we went back to our hotel, took showers, and then had lunch. We then decided to walk around Ruhengeri(Musanze) a little bit. Since I had already been there before I felt comfortable going with my family. I even took them through the market and off the beaten road. Overall I think it was a good time. They really got to experience what being a Muzungu is like, cause 5 of us walking around sure brought out the stares alright.
Now. My HEAVENLY experience. And no I am not mincing words when I use that description. I am pretty sure that I used all the hot water that the hotel had to offer. Gosh, one cannot believe all the dirt that comes off with hot water in comparision with cold water..haha.
Then, Sunday morning we were off to trek gorillas yet again. This time we went to the family with the english translation of a name 'Lucky.' I would try to describe to you how we got to the family, but I honestly do not think that you would believe me if I told you.But here it goes anyway: After walking through a forrest of bambo, we then realized that we were on the edge of a ravine type thing. The gorillas were at the bottom of the ravine. Essentially it required some classy bottom sliding down bushes..haha.. I'm serious.
This hour that we spent with the gorillas was unbelievable. At times we were totally less than the seven meters away. I got some awesome video.
Overall the gorilla trekking was something one could never imagine. I had asked my dad if he ever thought that we would be doing something like this in our lives, but he told me that honestly when he was a boy and he learned about gorillas he never even dreamed that one day he could see them in real life, and not in a zoo. To him it wasn't even something that was dreamable, it just seemed that impossible.
If you ever find yourself in this part of the world, take it from me, it is worth every cent. You will never be able to go to a zoo ever again.
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