Drive from park to Lake Kivu was much longer than anticipated. We have had lots of itinerary said this would be about 3.5 hours with a stop at a waterfall and a boat ride upon arrival. In reality, it took 11.5 hours driving with a packed lunch in the car, we had 3 brief stops for the washroom, and none of the described tourist stops. Lake Kivu is huge, 26km long and 50km wide at its largest point. It is a very special place for many Rwandans it is the largest fresh water like in Rwanda; the landlocked country jokes it is their ocean and an important source of fish and oil reserves and port development. It shares the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo. As we were approaching our hotel Alastair was using Google Maps, he realized the hotel was located 34 km from the chimpanzee park where we were supposed to spend the last three days of our trip. We advocated strongly with our guide Khalif, explaining our frustration about not wanting to spend all our time in Rwanda driving and really felt that we wanted our trip to reorganized so that we could do this part of the trip before heading to Volcanoes National Park so that we did not have to drive back and forth across the country. He was also frustrated as he had not seen our planed itinerary until the day before we started our tour and he had immediately identified the mistake in planning. There was no ability to move the permit for Volcanoes National Park which was very frustrating as we had booked this trip and paid the deposit back in October. With some strong advocating and working with his manager (not the one assigned to our file) but someone else who was more available he was able to organize us visiting chimpanzee in Nyungwe National Park and suspension bridge during one of the days we were supposed to be exploring Lake Kivu. Although this was not an ideal solution it did save us about 10 hours of travel time.
The road trips in Rwanda are amazing given the hilly countryside and beautiful views. They als give you the ability to watch local life happening all around you. On the day we traveled towards Volcano National Parks, it was Sunday, with everyone dressed for church it was a fashion show as we saw women walking along the side of the road wearing their finest clothing. Some of the women appeared to be wearing bright beautiful evening gown dresses, as well as the colorful traditional African patterns children were also out of their schooling uniform adorned in their Sunday best. Despite it being Sunday, it was it was clear that many of this subsistence farm workers were still at their usual field jobs or pushing by the bicycles carrying all sorts of products.
Alastair and I had an interesting tour around the southern end of Lake Kivu. It shares the border with Congo, and the areas around the lake are a source of longstanding conflict between the two countries, recently M23 has been having more dangerous activity around Goma (North Lake Kivu). Interestingly Rwanda has an open immigration policy with Congo, residents are allowed to cross the border from Congo freely, if they wish they can even move to Rwanda. We were told it is as simple as registering with the local Rwandan authorities to become residents, they then have access to schools, healthcare and other benefits .Our tour guide Enoch, grew up Rwanda, he is now the father of three boys and seems to be involved in many different businesses. He really enjoyed sharing his perspective on Rwandan history, the current government and social issues. He is very proud of his country and respectful of his president, clearly stating the difference seen in progress in East Africa depends on leadership. He feels president Paul Kagame leadership has done to bring Rwanda from ruin (after the genocide) forward as a strong African nation. Enoch spoke a lot about the group of 7 East African countries as a group, but also as separate countries. The direct contrast between the Congo and Rwanda was visible from the border along the river. Congolese houses appeared destitute and as Enoch pointed out very dangerous with risk to fall into the river secondary to erosion. A lot of work has been done in Rwanda to prevent erosion and build flood channels to prevent water damage. As we were continuing our walk it suddenly started to rain very heavily. We ended up completely thus shortened our tour of the Congo trail as the rain would have made the muddy trail dangerous.
The following morning, we got up very early to visit the chimpanzees in Nyungwe National Park. We really wanted Aiden as he was too young to see he gorillas. Because our tour company had done some manipulation to get us permits for that day, instead of the original ones booked for 5 days later, we ended up having to visit the old main station at the north side of the park, this meant we were driving about 3 hours to the start of our trek, this pushed us later in the morning, a factor that likely contributing to the difficulty we had seeing chimpanzees. Some of us managed to briefly see two chimpanzees very far off in tree. We also saw the nest they stay in for one to two nights, built high up in the trees. We learned a little bit about their habitat and their way of life; they are very fast moving in search of food. Unfortunately, despite trackers searching for the chimpanzees we never really caught up to them. After a strenuous hike and then spent at least an hour waiting on a dirt road in hopes that the trackers would locate them we decided to give up so that we would have time to the parks canopy suspension bridge. Retrospectively this was a great decision as the views were incredible. Again, because our visit had been rescheduled and pushed to the very North End of the park we ended up driving an additional 2.5 hours to reach Park headquarters and the usual start of chimpanzee treks and the suspension bridge.
