Today was a travel day. We were supposed to go see the golden monkeys which live in the same forest as the gorillas but our flight back to Nairobi got changed so we didn’t have enough time. I’m not happy about this. Here is a picture of a golden monkey so you can see what we missed.
We had a leisurely morning. It is their low season because they have a lot of rain. During the low season, the hotel allows locals to stay there. There was a general who stay at the hotel last night. He said good morning to Rick, so Rick asked him a question about the war in the Congo and Rwanda’s role. All of a sudden he didn’t know how to speak English. Hummmm!
We left the hotel at 10am and it was actually sunny! We really loved our hotel, called the Bishops House. The facility was beautiful and everyone was great. We got to know a lot of the staff.
We drove 2 ½ hrs back to Kigali. Along the way we noted how clean the roads are because the government pays people, primarily ladies, to sweep the road every day. We also noticed that in the city (Ruhengeri is the second largest city in Rwanda) they have sidewalks! Pretty much every hill we could see was used for agriculture. The Rwandan people are very hard working. Everyone is doing something. There were bicycles everywhere. We saw many men pushing bikes piled high with product for the market. We saw other bikes that were taxis, taking people from one place to another.
We saw a lot of flags. The Rwandan flag is green for agriculture, yellow for mining, and blue for water, with a star in the upper right corner representing the country’s bright future.
We agree that Rwanda has a bright future. They seem to have a stable government and limited corruption. They have done a good job marketing and managing the gorilla trekking. The education and medical systems seem to work — a lot to be said, and a distinct set of differences from most of Africa.
We would have like to have seen more of the country and could imagine going back one day, maybe to see the golden monkeys. Everyone was very nice and their English is very good. We have heard some murmurings about limited freedom of speech and their involvement in the war in Congo, but don’t have any real insight. We would highly recommend a trip to see the gorillas, making sure you spend enough time to really see the country.
We arrived at the airport and had to go through a security check which involved taking all of our luggage out of the car and having a dog check for explosives. There was a thorough check of the car. Here is a picture of Hussein, Rick and our car.
Once we had passed through immigration we went to the lounge and got some lunch. We were joined there by our friends, Valentin and Sandrine (friends from gorilla trekking) who were also flying to Nairobi and then on to home in Paris. Unfortunately our flight was delayed until about 5 so we might have been able to see the golden monkeys after all.
We were meet in Nairobi and driven to our hotel.