Akagera

My Rwandan friend John (more on his awesome work here later) invited me to go with him and his visitors from the US to Akagera National Park for a day so of course I jumped at the opportunity. This is the "safari" park to visit in Rwanda, located on the border of Tanzania. At one point of the trip, our phones actually registered on the Tanzania network so I'm trying to decide if I can count Tanzania as a place I've been. :) Regardless, I'm planning a trip there in a few months.  We left at 4 am to drive the two hours there. We mainly dozed off during the drive and awoke to a beautiful sunrise.

Our "tour guide" eventually showed up but the extent of his telling us about things was pointing out a few animals and speaking to the driver in Kinyarwanda. Regardless, the trip was a lot of fun and we saw so many animals. I think my favorite were the zebras- there were so many of them!

 

 

This is the view of the big savannah area we were driving in.

  

We drove by a large lake and saw a crocodile (in the middle) and hippos who every few minutes would pop their heads out of the water.

  

We also saw a hippo on land who looked as if he had been attacked by something. You can't see it in this picture but his hindquarter had a large gash in it.

  

At one point of the drive, we saw a small merecat like creature running towards a mound that led underground.  Our driver got out to see if he could find it.

 One of the coolest things we saw was a heard of elephants. This photo does not do them justice but there were literally dozens of elephants in small groups headed towards us to go to the watering hole. There were some adorable baby elephants and some not so adorable large ones that tried to protect their young from our "dangerous" car. We were chased down the road by a large elephant--it felt like we were in a bad movie with the car trying to outrun the elephant. We got away fast enough but the elephant was definitely charging at us. The guide spent the rest of the trip warning other vehicles about the elephants.

 There were some really neat plants in Akagera. This bush, maybe thistles, almost looked like a bunch of polka dots driving by. There was also this bright red flower that reminded me of something from Dr. Seuss's The Lorax.

There were plenty of Impala.

And then my favorite: MONKEYS!! I think these may have been baboons.

This is another type of deer-like creature.  I think this one is called a topi.

About 5 minutes before we exited the park we found giraffes! This is just one of them but I promise there were more!

 Apparently, this area is also where the traditional cows are raised. We drove past many groups of them on our way out of the park. Check out how big their horns are!

Akagera was such a fun activity and I had a blast! I'm getting better pictures from one of the other ladies that went and will post them as soon as they arrive. Unfortunately the zoom on my iphone and my camera are not all that great.