Close encounters
After a very productive first week, we looked forward to a weekend safari trip! So on Saturday morning, we headed to Akagera National Park, some 2.5 hours north east of Kigali. There were 11 of us, in two off-road 4x4s with open rooftop. If you go on a safari, that's the best type of vehicle because it allows you to stand and take in the vast wilderness.
The roads to Akagera Park, as those in and around Kigali, are very good. Again, something that I tend to take for granted. My Indian colleagues remind me that that's not the case back home for them. The roads are long, and we saw people walking long distances on both sides of the road. On that Saturday morning, many of them, of all ages, were hauling yellow water containers of all sizes and shapes. From time to time, we would see a water pump where the children would be filling their containers. Our guide, Fabrice, later told us that the water is used for cooking, washing, and everything. They fetch water every few days, or maybe everyday, probably depending on how much they haul.
Along the way, we also saw many hills, of course, fishing farms, banana plantations, clay houses, men and women balancing loads of all sorts on their heads with ease, bikers carrying another passenger in the back (or in one case, a goat in a basket ;)) or basic necessities (green bananas, wood), women adjusting their colorful wraps (like a sarong - need to find out the local name), women carrying babies wrapped on their backs, and kids playing around unsupervised (the kind of innocence that America and some other countries have lost in giving way to "development"). Rodrigo was happy to see the clay houses in person. He'd seen them, usually with blue square windows, in many African paintings back home in Brazil. They were real! Occasionally, there'd be a goat tied to a tree. At one point, when we got to the red dirt roads, a flock of kids came to our windows to try to sell cute little houses or 4x4s that they had made out of branches of sorts. You can tell that they see many tourists come this way. Sometimes the kids would wave, and we would wave back.
The park borders Tanzania on the east. Akagera river (aka Kagera river) is the natural boundary between the two countries. Rwandans believe that the river is the source of the Nile. In fact, one of the local bottled water brands is "Source du Nil" (Source of Nile). Ironically, it is purified water, not mineral water. They do also have mineral water: "Inyange Mineral Water comes from the natural springs of Gasabo, located at the foothills of the breathtakingly beautiful mountains in the country of a Thousand Hills: Rwanda, where the water is purified by Mother Nature." Most of us use this water to drink as well as to brush our teeth - something we'd been advised during our pre-work, but that I had forgotten in the first few days. I quickly caught on.
After checking in at the park reception and at the park lodge, we had lunch, and then set out for our afternoon boat ride. On our way, we encountered two elephants. This is a case where two are better than one. Because a solitary elephant is a dangerous elephant, we learned. The elephant likes to feel that it's the mightiest, so if you face a lonely elephant, you want to make yourself small, retreat, and not provoke it. Because we had to wait for the elephants to get on their way, we were slightly delayed for our scheduled boat ride, but the guide was happy to accommodate us as long as we got back before the next scheduled ride. We saw birds of all types (eagles, King Fisher, cranes, and more), hippos submerged in water, the tail of a crocodile (they're rare to find during nesting season). After the boat ride, one of the 4x4s had a brake problem of sorts. While we waited for it to be fixed, we entertained ourselves with Noriko and Doug giving martial arts demonstrations, journaling, and taking pictures.
That was not the end of our adventure for the night. On our way back, the first 4x4 narrowly escaped an elephant. Their driver-guide, Emmanuel, warned our driver-guide, Fabrice. Sure enough, we soon came face to face with a huge solitary elephant. We had to back up a very long distance, slowly at first, then very quickly. Another car, driven by a tourist or expat, was behind us. We couldn't find another way back, so Fabrice told them that we had to wait in a clearance. We had no fire with us - something that can be useful to scare the elephant away - so we just sat and waited. When the elephant appeared, Rodrigo and I had some difficulties taming our phone cameras' flash, but luckily, the elephant took a look at our vehicles, shook its head, and then decided that we were harmless after all and went on its way.
Well, that was not our last close encounter. The next morning, we were again stopped in our tracks by another huge elephant. This time, 6 or 7 vehicles were stuck. It was raining. One park ranger got out of one of the vehicles and cleverly led the elephant off the tracks so the vehicles could go through. Unfortunately, not all of us could go through. The elephant came back. So Emmanuel grabbed a paper bag with some bananas that Doug had saved from breakfast and threw it to the side to distract the elephant. Through we went. Meanwhile, we got plenty of photos and videos of the mighty animal up close.
Afterward, we saw more hippos (better views than the earlier submerged ones), baboons, zebras (quite close), impalas, buck deers, buffaloes, and giraffes (very very far away). We did not get to see the lions that got reintroduced in Rwanda just a couple of weeks ago. I later learned that the folks in the other 4x4 had given me the nickname of "Carolion" in the hopes of spotting the lions. Alas, they probably needed a wilder mascot to make it a reality ;)
On the way back to Kigali, we still saw the occasional person fetching water. However, most of the people on the sides of the roads were nicely dressed for Sunday, with women carrying purses or their shopping. (These photos were taken from a fast moving vehicle, so the clarity is not the best)
We unanimously agree that it was an amazing weekend. We were exhausted, and at the same time, re-energized for week 2.
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