Dear Friends, How are you?… Another journey to go around East Africa was taken (again) last week & this time the destination countries were Uganda, Rwanda & Congo.

Welcome to Rwanda… The land of thousand hills…

We came all the way from Kampala, Uganda to Kigali, the capital city of Rwanda by bus. It was very cheap it’s only Ush 25,000 (around USD$15)/person, the journey started at 9am & we arrived Kigali at 6pm Kigali time (aprox 10 hours trip). When we were at Rwanda immigration check point, the immigration officer searched our stuff & apparently Rwanda is ‘plastic bag free’ country in other words ‘NO PLASTIC BAGS’ enter Rwanda! They removed all our plastic bags so you can imagine how messy our stuff were after that :(

In Kigali, we stayed at Hotel Des Mille Collines which is also well-known as ‘Hotel Rwanda’ (if you watched a movie called ‘Hotel Rwanda’ you must be very familiar with this hotel). The hotel is quite old, it seems they are trying to keep the style especially the elevator is very old fashioned & noisy… But the food is very delicious!!! If you visit Kigali, to go to Panorama Restaurant at Hotel Des Mille Collines is a must!!! :))) The rate of the hotel is considered expensive, however, they gave us special rate because we are members of the UN :))))

On the next day we went to Gisenyi town, it’s a small town along Kivu Lake & it’s also border to DR Congo. It was 3 & a half hours by bus. The town does not offer very much activity except to enjoy the sandy beach. Serena Lake Kivu Hotel is the only hotel where they have private beach, the view was beautiful & some guests were doing some sport activities on the lake such as swimming, kayaking & sailing. We were very impressed when the hotel offered us champagne as complimentary for the breakfast, WAOW!!! :)))

DR Congo

One of the reasons why we went to Ginsenyi was because we wanted to go to DR Congo which is only 30 minutes by taxi. We went to Goma town to look for possibility whether we could go to volcano area. Unfortunately when we asked several travel agencies in Goma they informed us that the volcano is closed for tourism now due to security reason. We were a bit disappointed but hey! We have been to DR Congo… :)))

Kigali City Tour

A weekend in Gisenyi plus visiting DR Congo was fantastic but we had to return to Kigali again. We joined Kigali city tour on our last day to visit some historical places such as Richard Kandt residence which now becomes a national museum – Richard Kandt was a German & he was a founder of Kigali City. The house was old but beautiful. Rwanda is very well known with ‘the land of thousand hills’ & we proved that by seeing the view of Kigali from the backyard of the house.

We also visited the Rwanda 1994 genocide museum. The museum used to be an army school where 10 Belgians Peace Keeping Force (PKF) being assassinated during 1994 genocide. They were assassinated when they were trying to protect the Rwandan Prime Minister whom unfortunately also being assassinated together with her husband. The building was very sad… The bullets holes were still there & they are witnesses on how brutal & cruel the 1994 genocide was…

We went to Kigali Memorial Center where we could learn further about the history of Rwanda & why the genocide took place. It was unbelievable one million lives were taken within 100 days!!! They keep some of the victims’ clothes, skeletons, photos & even the machetes which were used to kill the victims. All of them were very sad memory but it should not be forgotten (& should never happen again!).

Outside the building they also buried 258,000 bodies & the government is still trying to find out all the names of the victims because during the genocide a lot of families being wiped out completely so it is very difficult to trace now.

Despite the above thing, I can see Rwanda is very improving now. I can’t believe within 14 years everything is back to normal & this is indeed impressive development comparing to other countries which have similar history but they are still struggling up to present.

Back to Uganda

We decided to go back to Entebbe by flight (Rwandair Express) because I was afraid I could not be able to sit on 10 hours bus again to go back to Kampala :(

We went to Jinja to make ourselves relaxed after learning the sad history of Rwanda. However, in Jinja we could not help ourselves to stop by to World War II cemetery of East African soldiers who were killed in 1939 to 1945 to fight for British.

I have been to Jinja last year & at that time I promised to myself that if I had a chance to visit Jinja again I must stay at Nile Porch, it is a comfortable & beautiful tent accommodation near Bujagalli falls where many tourists go rafting, kayaking, buggy jumping, etc. I finally did fulfill my promise… We stayed at Nile Porch! :)))

Jinja is a small old town with a lot of old buildings. We went around during the day to Source of Nile – Speke memorial, Mahatma Gandhi statue & to see sunset at Lake Victoria. We were about to go for canoeing on the lake unfortunately it was cancelled due to bad weather (rain & storm).

Last but not least…

The whole journey was perfect & I really did enjoy it very much! I must admit 10 days are too short for us to visit three countries but what can we do due to our ‘limited’ leave…:(((((

Attached are some of the pictures. Sorry for the long email but I hope you enjoy reading this :)))

Cheers,

Imee