Sunday, September 9, 2012
By Steve Dale
Today I walked the walk with a maribou stork, saw a Masai giraffe up close and posed for a photo near a herd of Cape buffalo (from a distance). We drove today from Kigali to the gem of an African national park, called Akagera. The great thing about this park - well two great things....First, you don't see many other vehicles, except those in your group. We didn't see a single other vehicle. Second are the number of birds found here, 524 species! There are 600 species in Rwanda. We saw - among many others the colorful roller and woodland kingfisher, and very large African fish eagle and pretty oxpeckers making a meal off hoofstock.
For me one huge highlight was seeing an immature Nile monitor lizard; they get much larger than the 3-foot or so long dude we spotted.
There are currently so few lion in this park, in places you can get out of the vehicle, but not exactly near the hippo (where there also might be crocodile).
Antelope species we saw included the rare (and very large) roan antelope and impala.
The ride to get to the park and then inside the park does take a while (as my butt can attest), around 11 hours. Along the way, our driver told us a lot about Rwanda and the country's roller coaster history. I will say it's amazing how fast they've gotten their act together after genocide. They are indeed in many ways like an IT capital for East Africa.