Kigali, Rwanda

We've spent the last 48 hours or so mostly in airports and on planes. First was a seven-hour flight to Amsterdam, and shortly after an eight-hour flight to Nairobi, on KLM. We arrived around 8pm in Nairobi (seven hours ahead of Toronto), and quickly made our way through customs and immigration and to a hotel near the centre.

We had to be back at the airport at 8am for our flight to Kigali the next morning, so this Nairobi experience was rather brief -- a taxi ride, dinner, a night in the hotel and then a taxi ride back to the airport.

I remembered this time to take a large empty suitcase to pack souvenirs for the return trip. Every time I travel, I end up buying a large cheap suitcase for this purpose, and I now have more cheap suitcases than one person needs. I left the suitcase in the hotel in Nairobi, and I'll pick it up on my last day before returning home.

(The Kenyan passport control people asked Marissa Did you enjoy your stay?, out of habit, which Marissa found funny).

The flight to Kigali was short (only 75 minutes), but we still got served breakfast! That was surprising. We had good views of Lake Victoria as we flew over it, the source of the Nile. There were no problems through customs, and Canadians receive visas free-of-charge in Rwanda!

Our only objective today was to pick up the permits at the ORTPN office to see the gorillas (Office Rwanda of Tourism and Park National, which grammatically makes more sense in french). The gorilla tourism is strictly regulated, in order to control human exposure. Only a limited number of people (40?) are allowed to see the gorillas every day, so I had called a couple weeks ago to reserve the permit.

Permits in hand, we thought about seeing some of Kigali, but jetlag took over and we napped away the rest of the afternoon. There is a memorial to the genocide here that I would like to see.

Kigali itself is in a contruction boom. The Lonely Planet says that's due to the rest of the world feeling guiltly about not intervening in the genocide, and has thrown plenty of aid money at the country. Oddly, I don't feel a sense in people here, say compared to the sense I got in San Salvador or Siem Reap, of a sadness in people's faces. Although we've only been here less than a day.

The weather has been very temperate. Mid 20s in the day, and cool at night, (Nairobi and Kigali are both at a slight altitude, around 1500m) I probably won't get hot and humid weather until I get to Zanzibar. Thank goodness!

Anyways Marissa and I are off to have dinner and a local beer or two.

Toronto, Canada

As you can see from the nifty little sidebar, this trip is to east Africa. I'll be crossing a couple items off my list: climbing Mt Kilimanjaro, and going on safari through the Serengeti. Usually I try to have only one goal per trip, and spend the rest winging it; however, everything is pretty close and this trip has four (Mt Kilimanajaro and the safari, plus seeing the gorillas and diving off Zanzibar Island).

According to the Lonely Planet, there's plenty of internet cafes in east Africa, so I should be able to post updates frequently (except of course when I'm on safari or half way up Mt Kilimanjaro).