Nyungwe Forest National Park

Since Friday was a national holiday, six of us decided to take a weekend trip to Nyungwe Forest National Park, an incredible rainforest in the southwest corner of Rwanda.

Early on Friday morning, we bought tickets and boarded a minibus at the bus station in Kigali. The bus was meant to hold twenty people (four in each row), but the three of us in the backseat bought an extra ticket so we could have a little extra space on the five hour trip. It turned out to be the best decision of the day; we still didn’t have a lot of room and the ride still wasn’t very comfortable, but I can’t imagine making the five-hour trip with four of us packed into the seat.

When we arrived in Nyungwe, we unpacked and had lunch at the guesthouse, and then went trekking for a colony of colobus monkeys. As soon as we started out on our trip, it started pouring rain, so within a few minutes we were soaked, but we continued anyway. We first had to hike through a tea plantation to get to the area where the colony of monkeys lives. As we hiked, the rain just kept pouring harder and harder. Eventually we stopped to wait for it to let up a bit.The rain never really let up so we continued into the forest. As the rain continued to pour, I was convinced that we wouldn’t see any of the monkeys. Finally, however, we spotted three sitting in a tree. We walked a little farther to try to get a better look, and saw a couple more. Even farther down the trail, we arrived at a point where we could see six or eight. We stopped to watch them for a few minutes, and the rain stopped. They were difficult to spot, but if you look closely, you should be able to see two of the black and white monkeys in this picture. One is near the top, just to the left of the center, and the other is more hidden at the bottom just to the right of the center.With the rain gone, the clouds also started to clear and we had a beautiful view into the distance. Just past the trees, we could see Lake Kivu and, beyond that, the hills of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Finally, cold and wet, we returned to the guesthouse. One of the men took our shoes to be washed and dried while we ate dinner. Afterwards, we gathered around a fire in a small, covered area. While we were there, the man returned with our shoes, which had been washed, but not dried, so they were dripping wet, inside and out. We spent the next two or three hours roasting our shoes over the fire.

The next morning, we again got up early to hike to a waterfall in the forest. This time, the weather was perfect. It was sunny, warm and breezy as we again hiked through the tea plantation toward the forest.

Then we entered the forest and started the real hike. As we hiked, our guide showed us several trees and fruits and explained which ones were used to make clothing, which were used to start fires before matches were available, which the gorillas and chimpanzees ate, which the diviners in the village used to make candles to read the future, etc.
After a couple hours, we made it to the waterfall. We climbed to a rock just at the bottom of the falls and were surrounded by a beautiful scene. The forest rose up all around us, and in front of us was a huge, powerful waterfall. None of my pictures do it justice.

Finally, we hiked back out of the forest to the guesthouse. Some of the group had planned to stay another night, but three of us caught a bus back to Kigali so we could work today. I can’t decide whether the ride back was better or worse than the ride there. We were on a larger bus than before, which was much, much more comfortable, but it also drove much, much faster than the minibus, which made some of the mountain curves a little terrifying. But we made it back to Kigali, safe and sound, in just over four hours.