We went for the weekend (Friday-Monday) to the south-west of Rwanda, an area we did not visit yet.
We left around ten to be for lunchtime in Butare. There were a lot of people at the roadside because the tour de Rwanda is this weekend. It turned out today etappe was Butare-Kigali, the road we were driving on. Halfway in the well known town Gitarama, we were summoned to another road. We went off the sideroads to come out in the centre at the mean road, just in time for the leader group. People were cheering loudly, the racers were going fast downhill.
The next ten minutes every now and then some racers came past, people cheering for every one of them, even louder for those with a rwandan shirt. The end of the race coincided with the rain starting, it's rainy season after all. People ran off to all sides and we were clear to drive on.
The drive to the entrance of the Nyungwe forest was good, nice road, nice view. However the road became worse every meter, until there was more hole than road. We did see some monkeys at the side of the road. As later became apparent, you don't actually need to go into the forest, the best place to find the monkeys is the side of the road.
There are 6 monkeys in this picture if you look closely.
The tourist office and guest house is at the other side of the forest, so we had no choice but to endure this. When we arrived at the guest house we found out it was fully booked by a group of mostly English people, grump. However we could stay at the teaplantation five minutes up the road, for dinner we had to return, as the teaplantation has just a room. It turned out indeed just a room, no shower, no warm water, broken toilet seat. But you can't complain for 10.000 RWF (12 Euro) and the next hotel an hours drive away. So we went for dinner, which was nice, returned slowly in the dark, driving through the potholes. We opened our bottle of wine and sat outside enjoying the few over the teafields.
We were surprised to see that they knew about Sinterklaas, but I think they weren't good, the next morning the shoes were still empty.
After a good sleep taking the circumstances in consideration we had breakfast at the ORTPN (tourist office) and set off for our walk. We booked the forest walk to the water fall, not the chimp tracking. We started at the edge of the forest, where we left the car guarded by a child. The teafields are stunning, as it is a fully covered low green plant, the hill look like covered in a blanket. The forest walk was lovely, a variety of plants and trees. We saw some big birds and a few monkeys in the distance. The waterfall was nice, but more a landmark than a 'must see'.
We were lucky and it stayed dry all the way to the end of the walk. When we came back to the office we were kindly asked to park the car elsewhere as the prime-minister was on his way. So we paid the guide and hurried off to Cyangugu. It is a mere 20 km drive, but took almost an hour. The man from the ORTPN said they will fix the road next year, I hope he is right. Not only did we have a big rain shower, we also ended up behind a wedding party, which was cool.
No comments:
Post a Comment