It was a great turning point after realizing the ability to travel to Africa and in this case, we were to travel to Rwanda and Congo which are both found in east and central Africa.
This trip was to take us 09 days, we searched from the different website to look for the one that could fit into our proposed budget, we landed on tours in Uganda website owned by Nature Adventure Africa Safaris Limited a company based in Uganda, we navigated the all site up to when we found their contact form.
We contacted them and within 24hours we were replied, this prompted us to engage in various discussions including being provided with the itinerary.
This contained what we were to pay for, what we were to carry and the budget that was slightly affordable, we discussed on the mode of payment since we had to pay for the safari before our journey in order to enable the tour consultant to book for us every requirement for the safari including gorilla permits.
In Rwanda we were to visit the genocide memorials, travel to Lake Kivu and a game drive in Akagera National Park and we were to track the gorillas from Democratic Republic of Congo at a fee of $400 per person. We flew to Rwanda on our first day but due to the fact that we couldn’t do anything since we reached in the evening.
We were picked by a tour guide from the company and we were taken to the hotel for an overnight. On the second day after a nice cup of tea, we were picked by the guide in a 4X4 Land cruiser and we were taken to the North eastern parts of Rwanda where Akagera Park is found, here we had to do our game drives.
We reached the park gate by 8am and we went for a great briefing at the park headquarters for briefing, after we went for a game drive towards the Akagera River where we observed a number of wild animals that were wandering around the park including the buffaloes, elephants, rhinos, warthogs among others with hippos and crocodiles being seen bouncing in the river. This took us four hours as we took photos. This was too interesting and, in the afternoon, we were taken to Lake Kivu in the north western Rwanda for a rest.
Here we enjoyed swimming in the clean and fresh waters as well as sailing on the boats around the lake for the local people, indeed this was a nice experience we gained from this lake as we felt free from stress in a different environment.
Here we slept in Goma a town in Democratic Republic of Congo and it borders Rwanda and on the third day we were taken to Kibati patrol station where we were briefed by the park ranger and at exactly 8am we were guided through the trails as we headed to the mountain deep in the bamboo forests, this took us some good hours to reach where these endangered gorillas were settled.
Good enough there were some other rangers who had gone there before us and these helped us to find them in time since the earlier rangers had already spotted them, this eased our trek since spent an hour with the great apes within their natural habitat.
We took photos of the juveniles and the infant gorillas that were being breast fed by their mothers. The male silver back is seen protecting its family including looking for food, what excited us was that after the male silver back gets food for the family, it has got the first priority to feed before any other family member.
After a wonderful experience, in the afternoon we went back to the park headquarter where we received our certificates and after we went back to Goma town where we found the Comic dancers who made our evening a wonderful one.
On the fourth day we went back to Kigali city where we took up a city tour at the Kigali genocide, here we witnessed the grave where almost 25000 people were buried in the same hole due to the genocide that took place in the country in 1994, we found audios of different international languages plus operators who added us with more information regarding the genocide though the story is too touching.
We spent the night in Kigali as we were enjoying the different clubs around the country and on the fifth day we were taken back to Kigali international airport in the afternoon for our departure. We cannot express the joy we had and the happiness we got with Nature Adventure Africa safaris limited.
