Nyungwe

Last weekend we went to Nyungwe forest; it is the largest rain forest left in Africa which is amazing when you consider that Rwanda is so small. We had been through it a couple of times on the bus but this time we did it in style -our wonderful friends th Medical Missionaries of Mary lent us their four wheel drive jeep for the weekend plus Bosco their driver! We could stop wherever we wanted to admire views or look at animals. We stayed on lake Kivu where we ate lots of SAMBAZA - a wonderful tiny lake fish that you eat whole - hot and crispy mmm!

The first day we did a 10.5 kilometer walk with a guide, to an incredible waterfall. It is expensive to do the walk but so worth it. We started off walking through tea plantations and even before we entered the forest we saw blue monkeys; The forest is marvellous, magical, magestic, magnificent! you feel you have stepped back thousands of years. You are surrounded by strange and sometimes ancient trees and plants; The guide,David had told us not to touch any green plants in case they were hiding green vipers and then suddenly there was a green viper in all its green glory slithering across our path! its bite is poisonous but not fatal!

the waterfall was worth the very difficult trek down to and up from - so incredibly powerful and so alone, it was wonderful! There are many animals in the forest but they remain so well hidden or only come out at night that we were very lucky to see the large group of rare blue monkeys and colobus monkeys and also a blue turaco and many other birds. You can go on a special chimp treck but that is even more expensive.

The second day we went on a shorter walk, it had been raining very hard so going was treacherous. The guide told us to tuck our trousers into our socks because of the driver ants which attack anything that disturbs their activities, but because of the rain he didnt think they would be about - he was so wrong!! We spent at least 5 minutes pulling them all off. Again we were struck by the majesty and timelessness of the forest. The last elephant was killed in Nyungwe in 1999 and the plants that only they eat have become rampant and are choking other plants; there is a plan to reintroduce elephants into the forest, I hope they do it soon