Uwinka

After our day bushwhacking we decided to do something less strenuous and so decided to set out to Uwinka which is the main staging area in Nyungwe. It was also on the way home and offered a large selection of trails. As I mentioned, national parks operate differently in Rwanda than in Canada and instead of just paying for a park pass and going on the trail as you would in Canada, it is necessary to take a guide along with you, consequently each trail costs between $50 and $90. This sounds at the outset like a make-work project until of course you realize that in Africa we are much farther down the food chain than we are in North America.

We got to “sleep in” on Sunday which meant we only had to get up at 0600. Breakfast was waiting for us again. There was another group also up that early and we ate together. At 0630 we headed eastward over the bumpy road back to Uwinka. It took over 30 minutes to cover the 20 km and we eventually rolled into the fairly new tourist centre at Uwinke. We were all pretty sore from bushwhacking after the cousins on Saturday and trail selection was going to be a game time decision.

Mary and I decided to pass up on the 6 hour hike with the 700 metre elevation change in favour of the 3 hour hike with only a 300 metre elevation change. Funny how 300 metres sounds so much easier than 1000 feet. Brady and Mike had learned nothing from the day before and decided to track a group of Colobus monkeys, an excursion that they were assured would involve bushwhacking.

We met our guide Ami and were handed walking sticks and set off downhill on a fairly steep hill. We were very soon in the midst of the rainforest. Ami mentioned that we might encounter chimps and explained what we should do if challenged by a chimp. “Yeah right”, I thought, “2 hours of bushwhacking yesterday and we run into one on the trail today.” We saw huge mahogany trees plus a tree whose name I forget with large buttressed trunks. There were ferns that looked right out of Jurassic park and many flowers. A large valley opened up to the side with incredible vistas. We continued to head down and down. This concerned me as I knew that we were eventually going to have to climb back up again, plus the heavy rains from the day before had made the track very slick. At one point Ami pointed us upward and high above our heads we could see the interlocking branches of the trees forming the canopy over us. After about an hour and a half of mostly stead descending we arrived at the waterfall mentioned on the trail guide. Ami suggested we wash our faces in the cold water; I didn't like the look of of rocks we were going to have to walk on to get to it.

A steady climb out that didn't seem as bad as I feared and we were back at the staging area in under 3 hours. We had been afraid that Brady and Mike would be waiting for us but they hadn't returned. We talked to a couple from Britain who were driving from South Africa back to Britain. Brady and Mike still hadn't returned. At some point one of the guides told us that their guide had radioed in and they would be another hour. That was when a major rainstorm started. We huddled under a shelter and thought about how our colleagues must be suffering. Finally they returned. It turned out that they had chased the monkeys down 700 metres of bush before having to ascend said bush.

We piled into the truck and took off eating some croissants that Mary had brought. We stopped for photo at the Nile Congo divide sign and then it was off out of the national park and through the same countryside we had passed through on Friday. A few hours later we were back in Kigali.

Later in the evening we got a torrential downpour in Kigali, the first rain there since we arrived. We took a taxi to an Indian restaurant for a fabulous meal.

Pretty decent weekend.