Western Province

The day started out with us getting surprised by a gigantic baboon trying to break into a fridge in camp. He didn't succeed and was soon shoo'd off by the camp security. But that was quite a sight in the early morning.

Fortunately, we didn't trust my rebel instincts. We had heard from the camp manager that we'd have to present negative covid tests for the entry to the national park we planned on visiting today. My plan was to just take some of the self tests I carry with me and do them on site. Ultimately, the decision was taken to go to the health center some five minutes away and get the tests done there. Testing was as uncomplicated as always, they were just really slow in administering them. Luckily they offered to send the results to us via text message, so we didn't have to stick around for the results.

Since breakfast was served late (most of it we only managed to get for takeaway since they had messed up the schedule) and the testing was also late, we ended up in yet another race against the time. We were told that all trips from the park headquarters start at 08:00 sharp. It was a wild 50min drive to make it there on time, with a fairly challenging road that was winding through the rainforest. No chance really to go faster than 40km/h at any point in time.

Soon after we entered the general park area we spotted the first few primates. Some cute velvet monkeys, as well as a whole platoon of baboons. Nyungwe is known for the many types of apes populating it, most famous of them the chimpanzee. None of the rare mountain gorillas live here, though. Something else that caught our attention was that there were military patrols everywhere! Like, literally everywhere. Some of them were walking along the road, others were standing next to the road, spaced out some 50m to the next person. Each patrol had one person with a gigantic radio, several people with rifles, and one person with a huge machine gun.

We later found out that the military patrols were instated because reckless drivers kept falling off the road and disappeared in the jungle below. It would sometimes take weeks to discover that someone had wrecked there. Their role was to be first responders and alert for more help with their radios. Another unofficial reason is most likely that the border to Congo is not far, and a fair amount of goods transportation happens along that route. As well as some illegal border crossings, we would imagine.

We made it to the park headquarters at 08:00 sharp. The first thing we were asked for was our covid test. They wouldn't have accepted our self tests, so we dodged a bullet there. We then, however, got a big fear confirmed. At the lodge they had already advised us that there would be a 100 USD fee to be paid per person to be allowed into the park. This annoyed me a lot, as before that I had checked a lot of different resources and it wasn't mentioned anywhere that were would be a fee like that. The previous night I had done even more research, and nowhere on the web was any mention of this fee, so I had figured the lodge guy had just made it up - he was dodgy anyways...

Turns out he didn't lie. To make matters worse, the 100 USD only included the permission to enter the park. On top of that, we were charged 40 USD per person to be allowed to use the famous Canopy Walk of Nyungwe, and an additional 25 USD per group for the obligatory guide without whom we would not be allowed to go anywhere. We ended up paying 305 USD for the two of us for a "walk in the forest". Now, that really soured my mood. But we had traveled far for this experience and neither was I willing to go back now. So onwards we went.

Only five people entered the park on that day, a group of three and the two of us. Two guides were assigned to the groups, so we had a private guide. Our chosen tour included the canopy walk and an approximately six hour long hike to five picturesque waterfalls. The hike was beautiful. The canopy walk was... nice, but nothing special that would warrant a 40 USD pp price tag. So we really took our time there and even blocked the other group from advancing for a bit. Though that of course wasn't our intention.

The remainder of the hike was also great, as we really got a chance to immerse ourselves in the jungle. There were gigantic mahagony trees, some 200-300 years old, that really put everything to scale. We didn't manage to spot any chimps, but heard them once or twice. The ground was quite muddy, and we had to apply some careful balancing acts to not lose our footing in many places.

Both Anne and I are pretty fit when it comes to hiking, and we did the 6h hike with the canopy add-on in 4h30min total. After yesterday's chaos we decided to head back to our camp for another night and relax overlooking the tea plantations during sunset.Read more