Hotel Ubumwe Gisenyi

... every kind of weapon imaginable. Guns, clubs, machetes, and any other weapon they could find. Anybody that was sympathetic to the Tutsi people or were married to one was automatically killed. There was a request to the UN to send in a peace keeping force but the UN Secretary General denied it citing some kind of reason. Prior to the mass genocide, I guess the French armed the Rwandan army with all kind of weapons and ammunition with a multi-billion ...

... I few of the people from the group to say ..."I have no money" or my favorite, "Im not a bank!" I'll be returning to this beautiful place soon, the people are too wonderful to not return. We're on our way back to Kegali tomorrow afternoon to catch the bus to Nairobi Kenya.....a short 17 hour bus ride. WOOOT....so many pictures to share with all of you....when I return. Hahah Love hugs and kisses -Cara

... He said when he was younger it had been night and they heard a bunch of machine guns firing. Being a small town they didn't know what it was so went outside to see what was happening. Because it was dark the soldiers couldn't tell the civilians from the military so they were firing on everyone that moved. Their doorman got shot and killed but the entire thing lasted only a few hours before they retreated. What was strange was that he told the story with a big smile ...

... it had. To put it in perspective the rate of people killed was 10x the amount of Jews killed by the Nazis. For such a small country that's just scary. So the owner finally calls me at 5:30 to tell me that unfortunately the guy that was supposed to cancel changed his mind so he did not have a permit for me. So I didn't want to waste another moment so I packed my stuff and rushed out of the hostel (I also didn't want to pay another night as ...

... of 24 all the way to Cape Town. That’s a full load! The group is pretty mixed, with 6 kiwis, a couple of Aussies, Dutch, Moldovian, Bulgarian, Canadian and the majority Brits. There’s only a couple of odd ones, but they’re leaving after 19 days – so no probs. In fact half our group changes when we get back to Nairobi.

Highs: Gorilla experience
Lows: Got a culturally insensitive **** in our group – but he’s easily ignored

... waking the driver up very seriously: they decided to do some singing. About pineapples. They invited the driver to join in and let me tell you, he definitely woke up at this point ... Mainly because he was laughing so hard!!! We passed the remainder of the journey very comfortably, with a new burst of 'the pineapple song' every time the driver so much as prolonged a blink! When we arrived at Gitarama, Jennie and I embarked straight onto ...

... s remaining mountain gorilla population. There are only about 750 gorillas left in the wild and they are mostly very well protected. Unfortunatly the gorillas are also found in Congo which is not very stable. A few years ago someone executed several of the gorillas. It is believed that some of the local farmers did it because they do not have access to the land the gorillas live on. The crime of killing a gorilla is punishable by death in all these countries ...

... hotel with a pool and loitered beside it most the morning. We ventured down the road and found the Bikini Tam-Tam beach club, a rundown place loaded with locals enjoying food and drink on a Sunday afternoon. Returned to our hotel and talked with David and his wife, Claudette in the evening. Returned to Kigali the next morning and killed a day there before our flight to Zanzibar.

... make sure I wasn?t going to try to access the hotel?s facilities. About 10 minutes later, a beach vendor approached me. About 10 seconds into my conversation with him, the security guard started yelling at the vendor and telling him to leave me alone. This is when I realized why the security guard placed a chair by the border. It was to scare the vendors away so they wouldn?t bother me. He did this for about an hour scaring off several vendors. Each time I ...

... the road, and the houses and shops were built much closer to the road and to each other. There was, in general, a lot more activity. Still, the beautifully-manicured gardens were there, glorious flowers and healthy-looking vegetables. It seems both men and women share in the workload, in the gardens and in the fields. At one point, we passed a huge road construction site where people were hauling buckets of water and ...