Travel with B&B

Waking up in Rwiza village  Well my first thought was the aches and pains from the hiking yesterday. My back has seized up as has my left calf muscle - considering we’re meant to be doing the Dian Fossey walk tomorrow that could be interesting.  Ben walked down to the side of the lake to watch the fishermen come back in, whereas I watched it from our balcony. Last night they went out in dribs and drabs, but this morning they came back altogether - a very impressive sight of around 12 lots of the three boats that they tie together, and again, they were all chanting as they row.  Last nights goat was a bit chewy, (no worse than badly bbq’d pork) but very flavourful. Again served with chips - we are going to eat a lot of chips this holiday I think!  As we left we have out some of the exercise books, pens and pencils we brought with us and the. Hold ten were so excited! If you do visit Africa, don’t take them sweets or money - stationery, shoes or sports stuff would be t...

A simple breakfast of ham and cheese omelette at Chimpanzee lodge before we set off to Nyungwe visitor centre. The bed was a bit hard and there was occasional truck noise outside but otherwise it was a nice stay.   It’s around a 35 minute drive from the lodge back to Nyungwe visitor centre. You might see monkeys and birds just driving there. On    our arrival one cheeky L’Hoests monkey stole a banana skin out of a bin and even though it was chased off, dared to go up to the cafe and steal a small bunch of bananas from one of the guides.  Irebero trail  There are several different treks to choose from at Nyungwe varying in length, elevation and difficulty. I am extremely unfit so there was no way anything over 3 hours or moderate difficulty was going to cut it!  We opted for the irebero trail - meaning ‘viewpoint’ in Kinyarwanda. It was supposed to be 3 hours and 160m of net elevation (not counting the downs and ups in between).  We were allocated a gui...

Driving in Rwanda  Firstly, they drive on the right, so make sure you’ve thought about that! Rules of the road are generally the same, traffic lights, stop signs etc.  Make sure you are looking in your mirrors A LOT. There are so many of the little scooters and they are a bit like a swarm of flies you are trying not to squash. In the city this was hard, but they got fewer as we drove further out.  There are police stationed regularly around the city, and there are a lot of speed cameras (photo to come). Everyone is fairly relaxed though and there’s no beeping other that to let someone know you’re there in case they haven’t seen you trying to overtake.  You will need to have your driving license and an international drivers permit. We were informed by Kingfisher that the police WILL pull us over at some point. Give them all the documents and answer any questions they have politely. They may check the car and your luggage. Be polite and they will be polite back. We are...

  The flight  Our flight from Heathrow was due to take off at 9:20pm, so being British, we got there 3 hours early. It is important to note that RwandAir do not have an electronic check in and bag drop, so you will have to queue. This queue is likely to take longer than you think because apparently Rwandan’s do not travel light and then like to argue when their baggage is over the limit and they are charged extra.  Otherwise we had a small bite to eat and drink in the Aspire Lounge (free access with Bens credit card) and then headed to our gate.  When we boarded, we were all packed like sardines into the back section of the plane with no passengers in the middle section. We later learned this was for weight distribution during take off and landing - but such an empty flight meant we could spread out once in the air - Ben happily had a row of four seats to sleep on. (Photo to come when we are home!) I didn’t sleep well (which I expected) but watched a cool lightening ...