Gorillas in the mist

Saturday, April 23rd was a day we’d all been looking forward to! Our new international family would be reunited once again, having a fully integrated Brittany as fourth member. We had been planning this weekend for weeks as Charlotte, Sue and I wanted to go to the gorillas all together. An Eastergorilla instead of an Easterbunny would do the job on Sunday!

Amahoro guesthouse
Saturday and Sunday night we spent in the lovely Amahoro-guesthouse, which is run by the Amahoro-tours agency I dealt with that same week. I had been invited by the owner who was curious to hear my opinion about it and the others had read it in our – still highly valued – travel bible ‘the Bradt guide’. So everybody happy, we checked in at the guesthouse and left for Volcanoes lounge where we had Pizza With A View, having Mount Muhabura right in front of us.

Volcanoes – part two
After a banana & bread breakfast we were once again picked up at 6.30am to head down to Volcanoes National Park where we all were going to see gorillas; Charlotte and Sue the living ones, Brittany and I the dead ones at Dian Fossey’s tomb and gorilla cemetary.

Earlier that week it turned out I wasn’t going to see any gorillas during my time in Rwanda. I even got an angry phonecall from the RDB guy who said ‘I’m asking too many questions and bothering too many people and they’d been so nice to me.’ I replied in the same way, saying that his colleagues in both RDB (Rwanda Development Board – Tourism Dept) and ORTPN (Rwanda Tourism Office) had sent me from one person to another, making me call different people and then setting me up with a lousy research permit that had cost me 80USD for absolutely nothing. It was a total scam, ‘grab-money-and-go’ kind of thing and I was furious about it! I said I was going to file a complaint and ask for a full refund of the money I paid for a shitty piece of paper. In the end, I never heard back from any of them.

After Charlotte and Sue were settled in a nice group, Brittany and I were going to book our hike. I had warned her about the lousy service and staff that had absolutely no clue what they were doing but on Sunday it was even worse. It was so ridiculous it wasn’t even funny anymore. The manager had troubles counting 500+500+300+300 USD for four people (two residents and two non-residents) that he had to do it over and over again, running the bills through a small counting device to end up saying ‘it is not correct’ while it was, and had to start from scratch again and ended up saying ‘oh, so two residents and two tourists’. When he said those magical words, those people were close to dragging him over the counter. Then there were two Japanese girls working for the UN so he had to copy their passports and visas. It took ages for him to read the – fairly simple and limited – information on their visas and workdocuments. We were about eight left and all got a bit sarcastic with him, which was a bit rude I guess. At some point I couldn’t stop laughing at this stupidity cause it was plainly ridiculous, but this guy being a manager was a joke.

When the Japanese girls took off we were the only ones left. By that time it had come close to 8.30am, knowing that briefing is at 7am and the last departures are at 8am. At that point, they simply told us we couldn’t go to Dian Fossey cause it was too muddy on the trail. Never taking no for an answer, we were quite frank (ok, I was) with the boss cause he went chasing these four people who just bought their gorilla ticket, asking if they were the ones interested in Dian Fossey. They thought they had ended up with a wrong ticket after the 300+300+500+500 hassle and it just made everything more confusing. After witnessing all this I was so fed up and I yelled at this guy over the parking lot with everyone standing around us ‘dude, WE are the ones who want to go to Dian Fossey. Are you interested in our money or not, cause we’re getting very pissed off right now.’ The other group started laughing, wished us good luck and all of a sudden, Dian Fossey was not a problem anymore and we had our ticket within ten minutes. You know what they say, good girls go to heaven, bad girls go everywhere. Again, there’s a reaon why they put a retard in such a position, but more on that when I write my overall conclusion on tourism.

Dian Fossey trail
The trail to Dian Fossey’s old research center, tomb and gorilla cemetary was for 60% the exact same hike we did on Monday when climbing Mount Bisoke. The start is very strenguous and a hell of a workout. Unfortunately we had the same guard as the other day and as soon as he saw my face he started laughing. I said ‘yep, I’m back and I’m still slow and definitely taking my time to enjoy this.’ He didn’t say much and ran up the mountain. We lost track of him most of the time cause nobody could keep up. The good thing was that Brittany and I were the only ones in the group so we set the pace, or I did… keeping everyone waiting all the time. I didn’t care, I wanted to take pictures of the beautiful scenery, ,listen to the sounds of nature and enjoy the hike in this oase of tranquility. They wanted to go faster fearing it would soon start to rain. Well, to be honest, we were once again up to our knees in the mud, wet and dirty so I didn’t give a f*ck about rain coming. It wouldn’t make me walk faster anyway and with rainjackets and boots on, we were well equipped for it. But the locals here don’t like getting wet at all.

Halfway up we met the two Japanese girls who were fighting the mud. At the reception, nobody had told them the trail up Bisoke was very muddy. At the park headquarters they actually rent out boots, but they didn’t know. Their guides didn’t want to take them further up as they’d never make it to the top of the volcano. We all came together at the resting point and they were very upset about it. I told them they’d paid for it so the guides should do their job and if they decided to continue, they couldn’t refuse you, unless there were risks or dangers. Our guide replied that it was not the park organisation’s job to inform about the condition of the trails! All four of us bursted into the discussion once again, that it is exactly their job to inform visitors about this and give clothing advise, calling this on our planet 'customer service'. Then it was the girls’ responsability to either do something with the information and hire boots or do nothing at all and then end up like this. Now they didn’t have a choice, they paid lots of money for a trail and then were forced to head back to headquarters. They asked if they could join us perhaps as it wasn’t as tough, but then the whole bureaucratic bullshit came back into discussion and once again there was no flexibility.

Brittany and I continued on our trail, wondering why the heck Dian went so far to build a camp, but once we got there we understood exactly why. A secret hidaway under Mount Bisoke, amidst of beautiful vegetation and with a river running nearby, it was a wonderful place to be. There was an old restaurant lying in ruins, but other buildings or cabins had been destroyed during the ’94 genocide. Small signposts told us what used to be there and apart from some stones you couldn’t see much. The ruins of the restaurant were taken over by nature, being all green with trees growing through them. Dian Fossey was killed in December ’85 with a machete that cut her throat (even heard she was decapitated) probably by poachers who didn’t appreciate her severe action against them. It had always been her wish to be buried up there, next to her favourite gorilla digit who was also killed by poachers. She couldn’t have chose a better spot as last resting place.

Not even allowed to sit down or wander around on our own for a little bit, we turned straight around to head back to where we came from. Exhausted after a rather rapid decent, we met up with our gorilla ladies again to hear the funniest stories. Everyone had loved his climb and so did I – all happy I actually finished it - but I won’t be coming back to Volcanoes any time soon, that’s for sure.

Easter Sunday April 24th - Kinigi