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Overlanding across Afica in our Land Rover Defender: Rwanda

Andy Lees
2006-05-16 13:20:37

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kigali

it was a startling reminder that we had entered a former french colony when half a kilometre from the border a minibus came hurtling towards us on our side of the road. andy in the driving seat wasn't going to give in, it was for the minibus to move out of the way. a head on collision was imminent. then the realisation hit, we were in the wrong. the french drive on the right. we moved over and nervously took the next blind corner, still apprehensive. do the rwandans really drive on the right? there was no other traffic on the road so we were unsure. we ventured on, blaming the french for our near accident. with hindsight the guard at the border had been trying to tell us something in french. french isn't our forte and we had wrongly interpreted his instruction as him having a problem with where we had positioned our vehicle at the barrier. c'est la vie.

with rwanda being such a compact country it didn't take long to reach the sprawling capital. somehow we found our way to the centre and embarked upon a mission to obtain money from our credit card. with some relief we achieved this after visiting a succession of banks. i felt like dr. evil asking for one million francs, but we needed a lot of cash to pay for the gorilla tracking.

kigali was bustling, not really a city, more of an oversized market but pleasant enough. we made a reservation to see the mountain gorillas and then headed to a guesthouse where we enjoyed good food and our first rwandan beer; called 'the chairman' a satisfying 8% alcohol volume. we were yet to discover the delights of 'primus' in its generous 730ml bottles. clearly someone in rwanda likes their beer. it was at breakfast that we were grateful to the french for their evident culinery legacy.

ruhengeri

from kigali we wound our way steeply upwards into rwanda's central highlands. the land rover was emitting an increasingly ...