Rwanda Travel Blogs

A High Day in Rwanda
Apr 16, 2009 (12 photos)

... British colonies around them that still drive on the left - Uganda, Tanzania, and Kenya. So you find both configurations in Rwanda. The surprise was a large nontransparent cloudy white spot on the windshield right in front of me. I noticed there was a ...

Kigali conference: Day 2
Apr 18, 2009 (3 photos)

This morning we weren't able to start until after 10:30. One of our men here doesn't speak French very well. he had a hard time completing the profile test even with help. I helped him streamline his procedure and let him finish with help from Mr. ...

Exploring Kigali
Jul 1, 2006 (2 photos)

Today I was on my own. I was supposed to meet Désiré at 10am today, but after waiting until 12pm I left on my own. I left the guesthouse and headed up to the Rwandan Office of Tourism and Parks, which is located behind Hotel Mille Collines. When I got ...

Nyanza
May 6, 2009

... like walking into a restaurant to hear the furtive whisper, "Mzungu! Mzungu!" This is exactly how  our second Tuesday in Rwanda began and it made for a very amusing breakfast: we were seated outside in a prime 'let's-watch-the-mzungus' position and ...

Encore plus de sites de genocide
Aug 8, 2009 (18 photos)

Je viens a Kigali pour voir 3 sites supplementaires concernant le genocide. Les massacres ayant eu lieu souvent des eglises. Je vais donc visiter les eglises de Ntarama et Nyamata pres de Kigali ainsi que le memorial de Kigali ou plus de 250 000 victimes ...

From Poachers to Protectors: Saving the Gorillas
Sep 12, 2008

... by founding the Iby'Iwacu Cultural Village, a community-based tourism initiative, in the Musanze district of Northern Rwanda. Revenue from tourism has encouraged communities to protect gorillas and develop small-scale businesses. Today, the outcomes of ...

Hanging around with King Kong in Rwanda
Jan 11, 2007 (19 photos)

... ...a pretty sketchy experience. Local transport was waiting for us at the border to take us to the gorilla tracking capital of Rwanda, the town of Ruhengeri.   The next morning, we headed to the "Parc National des Volcans" to start our trek into ...

Cyangugu
Apr 20, 2009 (7 photos)

...   The Burumés have fascinating stories to tell. Mr. Burumé was teaching science in a high school in Eastern Rwanda when we discovered the church through one of its magazines to which one of his students was subscribed. Later after ...

Gisenyi, Rwanda
Oct 28, 2008 (5 photos)

Gisenyi/Lake Kivu October 25/26-On a Saturday morning, Ruhengeri is very quiet. The streets are empty.  We had to wait until 12:00 to get a bus the 1.5 hours up to Gisenyi.   We arrived in Gisenyi, and found a room in town.  There are ...

Volcanoes Virunga Lodge
Feb 24, 2008 (14 photos)

... there is a grand stone lodge with a cozy lounge bar and dining room.  Out of every window the seven volcanoes of Rwanda, Uganda and Congo stretched out with the twin lakes below.  Didas, our host, and the entire staff gave impeccable service-- ...

Gorilla trekking!
Feb 5, 2006

... to see and decided to try for the largest group, Susa. This group was also the furtherest away on the side of Rwanda's highest peak, Mount Karisimbi (interestly all the 'mountains' in the National Park are actually extinct volcanoes). As we would be doing ...

Close to the Gorillas in Rwanda, Volcano's Park
Jul 18, 2009 (11 photos)

... I started. In the next two minutes I was joined by 7-8 boys aged 9 throught 15. Several of them spoke excellent English (in Rwanda the second language is French, not English, so I was quite surprised). They asked me where I was going and offered to guide ...

So we made it to Rwanda...
Jul 25, 2008 (5 photos)

... genocide memorials just outside the city. The memorials themselves are pretty much as one would expect, dreadful and terribly sad. Rwanda as a country has made a substantial effort to maintain these memorials so as to not forget the past but to hopefully ...

Lake Remera, camping with friends
Jul 17, 2005 (5 photos)

See here the people I spend most of my free time with.

First Entry in Kigali
Jun 29, 2006 (3 photos)

Well, this entry is a little later than I had first intentioned. I was tired/busy from travels to spend to much time looking for a cyber cafe near my guesthouse and the internet was not working at the SERUKA offices (where I am interning) yesterday. But ...

Gitarama & the end of my Rwanda trip
May 8, 2009

... camera and record the moment; as it is I hope I never forget that sight!   My school visit ended my adventures in Rwanda: the next morning I left Jennie to her school visit and returned to Kigali, where I caught the 9am bus back to Kampala. I was ...

Gorilla Trekking, Kinigi, Rwanda (Day 2)
Jun 9, 2008 (14 photos)

Gorilla Trekking, Kinigi, Rwanda (Day 2) Monday June 9th, 2008. Kinigi, Rwanda. Now that we are old hands at this gorilla trekking thing you would think things would go all smoothly...not quite. We both woke up at 4am and couldn't get back to sleep so ...

Gorillas in the mud
Aug 10, 2006

... note, meaning all our money was fake. Only it wasn't. We started off getting a friendly reception as we drove through Rwanda, and then kids started throwing rocks at us, possibly because Robert ran over one of their footballs, or becauseof the huge ...

The Scruffy Little Settlement
Jan 19, 2009

... painfully, sometimes joyfully, my existence as it would have been otherwise in DC, my home. I played soccer, I worked, I drank, and I waited. Rwanda was coming, and I was going... but my mind didn't race, didn't stray, I never got too high or too low on ...

Rwanda
Jul 6, 2007 (10 photos)

... of a hotel manager who bravely used his four star hotel to try to save as many Tutsis as possible. The real 'Hotel Rwanda' is actually the Hotel Des Milles Collines. I'm typing this poolside there at the moment. Sitting here, on a pleasant day with ...

Flushing My Bigness Down the Pooper
Feb 2, 2009

... having problems connecting to the blog anyway)), and the kids here are all about their religion, because even while nominally noting that "IN RWANDA ONE HAS THE FREEDOM TO WORSHIP AS THEY PLEASE!", they always add, "BUT I LOVE GOD!" I say, yes, Allah ...

Gorillas - But Not in the Mist
Jul 15, 2004 (2 photos)

... eating it)! The biggest silverback in Parc National des Volcans was in the family that we visited - he weighed 220 kilograms. Rwanda has been different than Kenya & Uganda. It has a western africa feel to it, with women in brightly coloured clothes ...

Making my way to Kigali
May 18, 2008

... a while to get to Kigali but it was more because of my own undoing rather than anything else. Once I crossed the Uganda - Rwanda border (where I met a generous American girl who unloaded her Rwandan francs on me as she was travelling the other way), I ...

My Dear, Sweet Pinky
Jun 29, 2009

... ; well… black neighborhood. I reached for the handle to lock the car doors, but since I was walking, and in Rwanda, that attempt was unsuccessful, and said peeing ensued.)  I was riding back from the airport recently, heading towards the bus ...

Rwanda
Jun 4, 2006 (9 photos)

... . With nothing left to do in Ruhengeri we headed off to the capital Kigali by minibus through some beautiful countryside. Rwanda is approximately the same size as Ireland but has double the population, currently over 8 million people, and still growing. ...

Making friends in Gisenyi
Apr 5, 2007 (7 photos)

The two hour drive from Ruhengeri to Gisenyi was through picturesque farmland, always again over hills and into valleys, covered in fields of maize, cabbage, Irish potatoes, bananas and tea. My habit of falling asleep in matatus was taken care of by a ...

My first African Nightclub
May 23, 2008

... to meet some new people. All of us (except the Aussies) went out for dinner that night at a nice restaurant near 'Hotel Rwanda'. After dinner. Lyndsay and I met up with the Aussie girls and their new travel companion. Since it was a Friday night, we ...

A busy day of rest
Apr 19, 2009 (6 photos)

... group , followed by others including one for the men who were attending this first francophone leadership conference for Rwanda and Burundi. While we waited for the food to be served, I noticed several of the local brethren enjoying our ...

Travelling to Rwanda
May 22, 2006 (34 photos)

... . Lovely! Enjoy the photos! After the canoe tour, we rode the water taxi back to mainland and started our drive to Rwanda. The drive was uneventful & really bumpy. I will not miss the gravelled, pot-holed roads of Africa when I return home (smile). ...

A weekend in Kigali
Apr 1, 2007

... in their droves. Both "new Rwanda" and Israel have significantly shaped the political climate of their geographical region - Rwanda effectively created the conditions in which Zaire's long term dictator, Mobutu, was overthrown, and placed a Rwanda- ...