Imagine half the population of Australia squeezed into a country a quarter the size of Tasmania. This is what you get with Rwanda, a tiny land locked nation in the east of Africa. We decided to begin our African adventure here on account of the critically endangered mountain gorillas which can be found only here, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) – we were also interested in learning more about Rwanda’s recent history and seeing where it all went down.
Just say you have 200 Facebook friends, now imagine if 30 of them were brutally murdered in the next 3 months on account of their (largely arbitrary) race. This is the situation that took place in Rwanda (minus the Facebook part) in 1994 where roughly 1 million Tutsis were slaughtered by the Hutu majority, at the time the population of Rwanda was circa 7 million so 1 out of every 7 men women and children (and yes, it did include women and children) were killed.
17 years later the country has made a remarkable recovery and is actually very safe to visit (by African standards anyway!) and has a lot to offer tourists. Our first 2 nights were spent in the capital Kigali, a really interesting city built on a series of hills – no matter where you are you’re either on a hill or in a valley so either way you’ve got views. There are also birds of prey constantly circling in the skies which is equal parts creepy and awesome. Here’s a sunrise from the hotel room.
PPS – sorry about the horrendous pixelation of the images above, some technical issues from posting with an iPad that I don’t have time to resolve!
Location:Rwanda
