Safari!

When you think of African tourism, what do you think of?
SAFARI!

Rwanda's tourism niche is gorillas, and the traditional African safari is most often found in Kenya or Tanzania, and I guess at Kruger in South Africa. However, Rwanda has a national park on its eastern border (shared with Tanzania), where the landscape is drastically different - think lakes and savannah with small trees, acacia, etc. In this part of the country, there is most of the wildlife you'd associate with safari - elephants, zebra, hippos, giraffe, buffalo, monkeys, baboons, wharthogs, all sorts of antelope - topi, impala, etc. Even a few leopards, but none of the big cats - lions - those are all in Kenya and Tanzania. We saw everything except leopard and elephant, but what we did see was amazing.

We rented a 4x4, packed some lunches, and made the 2 hr drive to the border. It was my first time out of the city, and the countryside is really great. Hills that are completely green, filled with banana trees (its mainly the western and southern parts of the country that have the coffee and tea farms) that gradually gives way to a flatter, grassier landscape.

Also, outside of the city it hits home that the GDP is 270 dollars per person. Most everyone is a subsistence farmer, working plots of land the size of an acre and trying to scratch out a life. Most of the houses are stick frames and made from bricks or dried mud. Also we seemed a bit more foreign - got more stares and waves, and some extended hands asking for a handout.

We got to Akagera (the park), went to the office, and was given a guide. One of my coworkers had been to Akagera many times and knew the place well, but the guide was really good at spotting wildlife in the distance and in the brush. He also had a big book of the Birds of East Africa - apparently there are 550 species of birds in Rwanda and there is hopes to develop some bird tourism to diversify the country's offerings. Ever since my sister's pet parakeet Sammy, I haven't been a huge fan of birds, but these things are amazingly colorful, like someone painted their feathers with a brush.

Seeing the animals is a thrill, and most are completely unconcerned that you are there. The two highlights were the hippos and the giraffes. We went to one of the lakes in the park and there were about 6 hippos in the water, and one sunning himself on the bank. It was HUGE! Apparently the number one rule of hippos is: NEVER get between the hippo and the water. Water = safety for them, so if they are near water they feel fine; if they perceive a threat between them and the water, they'll fight like hell. And trust me, you'd lose that fight.
Our big fella just stayed there calm as day, watching us with a wary eye but only staggering to his feet after we'd been there quite a while and were revving the engine to leave.

The giraffes were much more skittish but we went offroad and got pretty close to them and they are amazingly graceful. And that neck is just so odd. Loved them!

There were a lot of DLAs as my coworker referred to them (Deer-like-animals) that were hard to keep straight, and after 6 hours it wasn't quite as exciting to see them or the baboons (so many it was like pigeons in Paris). Plus, after my experience at a game restaurant in S. Africa a couple of years ago, I was more interested in tasting them than sighting them.

My general theory on zoos etc is that they are smelly and kind of sad, but this really changed my mind - the guide knew an amazing amount and seeing them in the park was fascinating. Even though Rwanda may not be the place for the ultimate safari, the people I was with who know Africa well loved the fact that there were NO other people around. We literally saw a group of 4 Germans once, and Akagera receives only 15,000 visitors per year, less than 50 a day, while Serengeti etc are in the many hundreds of thousands. A hidden gem, and definitely on the must see circuit I'll take you on WHEN (not if) you come visit.