Nyungwe National Park

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, Shawn and I got a chance to visit Nyungwe National Park, which is about a four hour's drive from Kigali. Nyungwe boasts a large tract of untouched mountain rain forest, home to thirteen species of primates, loads of mammals that they tell you right off the bat you are not going to see and something like 400 species of birds. It is also home to some ridiculously difficult hiking trails. We set off on one of these "trails" (or as I call them impossible vertical trudges through thick ravines with vicious man-eating ants thrown in for fun) in search of chimpanzees. We tried for about two and a half hours. Our guide, Jean Claude, did his best with a faulty radio, trackers that were in his words "not serious" and an avowed non-trekker slowing him down, but there was simply no finding the chimps, so he switched tacts. He decided that we should visit the mangabey monkeys which his trackers told him were "only ten minutes away". He set off with his machete blazing a new "trail", I stepped in yet another ant pile and the mangabeys did their monkey best to continuously remain just ten minutes away. This went on for close to an hour, until I came to a conclusion that I immediately and loudly shared with Shawn, Jean Claude, the trackers and anyone else willing to listen. I no longer gave a fuck about the mangabey monkeys. We had seen one's tail as he fled away from us and that was enough for me. It was clear that they did not want to be seen and I was fine with that. Had I been a hiker, or even remotely in shape, I am sure I would have wanted to continue since the park is absolutely beautiful (in fact there were many moments when it occured to me how much my friend Amy, an avid hiker, would "really love this shit") but as Popeye would say, I am who I am, and so we turned back with a distraught Jean Claude in tow. We were the park's only visitors on this day and he could not fathom us leaving without seeing some monkeys. At one point when we had stopped for a break, Shawn and I mentioned how great a cold beer would be, and such was his desire for us to enjoy our day that we soon realized he was trying to send a tracker an hour away into a nearby village to fetch us some beers. Reluctantly, we stopped him, but insisted on getting back down to level ground. A couple of hours later, we were finally back in our car, sitting in the nearby village, drinking our cold-ish beer when Jean Claude informed us that the colobus monkeys, the park's star attraction, were only twenty minutes from the road, were not on the move and that the trail was absolutely, positively not steep. He swore to this fact and vowed to turn back if the terrain suddenly changed. Convinced, we grabbed our walking sticks, he grabbed his machete and off we went. The twenty minutes turned to a little over an hour, but the trail was relatively level, the ants were notable only by their absence and other than a couple of streams that we had to cross, it really was not so bad. By the time we finally got to the colobus monkeys, a troop about 500 strong, all of them adorable, acrobatic and really difficult to photograph, I would even say that this hike was great. We watched in amusement as they gracefully leaped from tree to tree and engaged in some comically brief love making (about 30 seconds a pop). Meanwhile, Jean Claude beamed as we oohed and aahed. All of us satisfied, we returned to Modeste and his waiting car for the drive back to Uwinka, the park's main entrance. As we drove along the nicely maintained paved road, wouldn't you know it, we began to see more monkeys than we had in over six hours worth of hiking. The monkeys by the road were all L'Hoest monkeys and were much shyer and less acrobatic then their colobus counterparts, but it was still fun spotting them around every bend. Before leaving, I promised Jean Claude that I would make a sincere effort to return in the dry season when it would be easier to find the elusive chimpanzees. Now that the ant bites have stopped itching and my muscles are no longer sore, I am thinking I might actually try to honor that promise, but one thing is certain, I still will not give a fuck about the mangabey monkeys.