Lions, Giraffes and Gorillas Oh My

[Flying mermaid]

Alex picked us up for the last time to take us to the airport. Incredible security - similar to Nairobi, where you get out of the car leaving everything in it. Go through a metal detector gate. The car goes through a complicated machine that scans it. Then you get back in to drive to the airport, I think there were two more checks to go through at the airport.

We very much enjoyed Rwanda. There is no doubt Paul Kagame rules with an iron fist and there are some bad human rights abuses involving the opposition. You can have some sympathy though - this is a man who led the rebel forces for years and defeated the Genocidal government. I suspect he fears any kind of opposition that could lead to a recurrence- there must be some of it still bubbling away - it’s not that long ago.

However you can’t confuse human rights abuses with corruption, As African countries go Rwanda is doing well in this area. I checked the 2017 corruption list (which NZ leads as the least corrupt country in the world)

Australia. 13
Rwanda. 48
Italy. 54
South Africa. 71
Kenya 143
Uganda 151

Hopefully in years to come as the country becomes wealthier and more secure, real democracy might happen

I also found out the reason for the doubling of gorilla fees. The Government is using the extra money to buy back land from the community and relocate them. Then it plans to greatly increase the size of the gorilla habitat and reforest it. Lodges like Bisate will then be within the reserve. Gorillas are doing quite well and this will give much more room to form new families. Alex said they are calling the gorillas black diamonds, as tourism is the hope for the future of the country.

 

[JohnM]

Rwanda really is something else - and your pics confirm it.

You've got me hankering to go back to those astonishing immaculately clean streets in Kigali - as well as the wildlife and countryside, of course.

Trying to get people back home to believe what I say has been a perpetual ongoing problem ever since I went, I've found.... Sadly, preconceptions and misinformation rule....

 

[Flying mermaid]

A little has to be said about tipping. . It is really really confusing with gorillas! (All amounts in US$)

Bisate was fine - there was no individual tipping - I gave $600 for 6 days to be split among everyone, So much easier!

Porters

Porters get paid a wage from the porters association. It cost $10 to hire one - you give that to him and he gives it to the porter association and all the porters get paid out of that. Over and above that’s you can give them a tip. We gave $15 extra to each porter on the first day. Only $5 extra for the golden monkeys and $10 extra the last day.

Trackers

This gets very confusing as you never know how many there will be. In the end we gave $50 to each tracker group and let them sort it out. It was probably a bit more as we were using Francs and rounding up.

Guides

Usually two and a minimum of $15 per person per guide although we sometimes gave a little more, just depending on how much money I had left.

Bisate always gave us bags of snacks which we left with either the trackers or the porters -they seemed to like them.

 

[Flying mermaid]

Well another game drive calls -between meals and drives there really isn’t much time. We have some really good photos from the Mara River -soon!

 

[drron]

The problem with Kagame and assassinating Opposition figures it is not the Hutus he is going after it is members of his own party ie Tutsis many of whom played a major part in the victory by the RDF.And he has had people assassinated or attempted to assassinate in South Africa,the UK and US.

 

[Flying mermaid]

The problem with Kagame and assassinating Opposition figures it is not the Hutus he is going after it is members of his own party ie Tutsis many of whom played a major part in the victory by the RDF.And he has had people assassinated or attempted to assassinate in South Africa,the UK and US.

yes I know - I read about it to try and get a balanced view. Alex pretty much thought Kagame walked on water.....His view point was that Kagame refused to tolerate corruption or division of any sort from any party.

There is huge social engineering going on where no one is allowed to talk about Hutu or Tutsi - only Rwandians. Certainly all we saw were healthy looking people, kids going to school and a country forging ahead. Main challenges are getting their population growth under control and enough jobs for their youth.

 

[Imw]

Fantastic report

 

[Flying mermaid]

Just before we leave Rwanda I will load up a menu and some of the food

 

[Flying mermaid]

We were flying with Auric Air to Tanzania. We were the only two passengers and as often happens with bush planes they had changed to go via Entebbe (Uganda) to pick up another 3 passengers. We spent ages flying round and over Lake Victoria. Some pics of landscape we flew over - not very exciting.

From Entebbe we flew to Musoma where we cleared Immigration. Seriously why are Security and Immigrations people all over the world so bad tempered. I reckon they all have an application form with 3 questions.

1. are you always unhappy
2. do you never smile
3. do you like to bark orders at people

If you can answer yes to all 3, please apply

The metal detector gate beeped, so she went over me with her wand multiple times - it kept beeping on my hip. What do you have there? Umm - skin and bone.... Back, back she barked numerous times - I finally worked out I had to turn around I was obviously a seriously suspicious character, but she eventually let me through.

Soon we were back on the plane for the short trip to Lamai.

 

[Flying mermaid]

We were back into a tent again, overlooking the Mara River on the Tanzanian side.

 

[Flying mermaid]

Some of Mr FM's birds

 

[Flying mermaid]

and of course some lovely landscapes and sunsets/rises

 

[Flying mermaid]

We were hoping to see more of the migration and were in luck -literally hundreds of thousands of wildebeest and zebra

 

[Flying mermaid]

Then we were lucky enough to see a crossing - one guy didn't make it and slowly drowned.

 

[Flying mermaid]

One young wildebeest got himself into a lot of trouble. A crocodile had two goes at him, but he eventually managed to get away and back onto land. His mum came and helped him against the crocodile - you can just see the crocodile in the photo with the two of them and in one of the others as well. His leg looked as though it was injured maybe even a tendon broken, so he was going to be very vulnerable to predators.

 

[Flying mermaid]

When I originally booked the Singita Mara camp, I thought I would be happy if I could see one crossing, but of course greed takes over and I asked Jeremiah if we could please see another. He didn't promise anything, but we went looking. We found the tail end of a crossing and a poor young wildebeest who somehow seemed to have become stranded in deep water

 

[Flying mermaid]

Then along came a Hippo to investigate. Oh no we thought - hippos can be really territorial.

 

[Flying mermaid]

However the hippo just seemed to want to help! With a lot of resistance from the wildebeest he managed to get him onto higher ground

 

[Imw]

Must have been fascinating to watch!!

 

[Flying mermaid]

Having got him onto higher ground, the hippo then tried to nudge him to the shore, but the wildebeest wasn"t cooperating, so the hippo shrugged his shoulders and wandered off to deep water again.