Saturday, February 23, 2013

Some shit that is just ridiculous

The #1 tourist attraction in Rwanda is the gorilla trekking at Volcanos National Park.  You'd think they'd make it pretty easy to plan to do the #1 tourist attraction.

This is my second time in Rwanda.  I have been here now for over 2 months.  I have a guide book (Bradt) and have been using the internet for 2 hours and cannot figure it out.

I have a school holiday coming up March 31 to April 20 and I am planning to see some popular tourist sites in Rwanda over that break.

At this point I *think*
  1. I need to get trekking permits from an office in Kigali, that I pay at least some percentage of when I book.  This office is a simple acronym the ORTPN.
  2. We can take a bus from Kigali to a town ~20k (?) away from where we need to go that is interchangeably called Musanze or Ruhengeri.
  3. From there, there is no transit to a town called Kinigi, which is the entrance to the park.
  4. You need to be at the park by 7:00 AM on the day of your trek, so likely in Kinigi the night before.
  5. There is 1 guest house in Kinigi, as far as I can tell.
This is the guest house:

You'll note that the web site does not list any prices, or contact information.  If you want to stay there, you can walk up and ask for a room I guess.  If they are full, tough luck.

This paragraph below is illustrative of of the typical *information* you get while planning your trip here in Rwanda:
" The usual foundation for visiting the fascinating Volcanoes Park is Musanze previously well-known as Ruhengeri, which can simply be accessed by public transport starting from Gisenyi or Kigali on the very day of your tracking. You will be required to arrive at the headquarters of ORTPN in Kinigi, at the park entrance, by 7:00 am, although this is not a very dependable option for those who hope to arrive by public transport.  However, there isn’t any public transport from Musanze to the headquarters of the park at Kinigi."

Thanks for that.

So basically, I think I buy some permits, and then take a bus to Musanze/Ruhengeri the morning of the day before my trek, then spend the day in Musanze/Ruhengeri trying to get to Kinigi, and trying to find a place to stay in Kinigi.  Things here in Rwanda seem to generally take a lot of faith, and there is little confirmation, but so far, things seem to generally work out, so I'll hope for the best.

You would think Rwanda tourism would try to make this a little more straight forward, but nothing here is easy or simple, so I don't know why this one thing would be.

1 comment:

Mara Berde said...

Yeah.. that's basically how it works. Take the regular bus to Musanze then you can catch a moto to Kinigi. (It's at the base of the mountains, and really beautiful!) I'll email you about where I stayed... we called to make a reservation. Food was delicious :)
But most people who visit Rwanda use tour companies, who do all of the transport, food, permits, etc. If you do that, it's super easy to go gorilla trekking. Also super expensive (about $1000 per person.)