Kigali, Rwanda

A marathon drive. We got off to an early start, but pootled around the town for a while trying to find somewhere that might have shock absorbers for the Landy. Duncan stopped to ask a bloke who had his head in the bonnet of his Land Rover and we were quickly directed to a spares shop. A few minutes later we were on our way with a box containing two new, bright yellow, shock absorbers. It is recommended to buy your parts when you find them, as they can be tricky to find. Eleven hours later we arrived in Kigali. The border crossing at Rusoso was very straightforward as neither of us required visas. Rwanda is the country of a thousand hills, green and misty and Kigali is on the top of one of those hills with views over the city stretching into the hills in the distance. The city is busy with traffic, but seems quite orderly compared to Dar es Salam. There are loads of shiny late model SUVs on the road all emblazoned with NGO and aid organisation logos. It seems a lot of (guilt) money has been invested in Rwanda since the genocide and now prices for food and accommodation are treble that of anywhere we saw in Tanzania.

We spent Sunday just mooching around, we had intended to visit the Genocide Memorial Museum and the tourist info office to get a gorilla permit but by the time we'd changed some money near the mosque, wandered around unsuccessfully looking for an ATM that worked with foreign cards, dropped in at DHL to find out the package had arrived in Kigali and would be ready for pickup in the morning and stopped for a very leisurely late lunch at the cafe attached to the supermarket it was too late. Monday was very productive - we got the carnet from DHL, sorted out a new tyre for the Landy and had the new shock absorbers fitted. The Rwandans we encountered were extremely helpful especially when Duncan was able to converse with them in French - as we walked up the road we stopped a Land Rover driver with the tyres we needed to ask him where to buy one from and as explaining where to go was complicated, he had us hop in and drove us there! We were recommended a mechanic by two ladies in a spare parts shop who were reading the bible aloud to eachother - they said he'd be sure to be honest!

We spent most of the early afternoon in a dusty car yard while the mountings the shock absorbers attach to were welded back together - it seems the shock absorber was mostly fine until it fell off its mount - and the new shocks fitted. A funny sort of mechanics set up - four people to do the work and about a dozen to observe! We then visited the Genocide Memorial which told the story of the Rwandan atrocities in 1994 and also had exhibits on other genocide in modern times. It was quite fascinating, although emotional, for me at least.

Then we returned to the tyre place and spent the late afternoon waiting to get the new tyre fitted although we happened upon an Ecobank ATM there on the international network (by the diesel tanks at the Engen, just past the gorilla roundabout) which was handy as we needed money to pay for the new tyre.