On the Road in Rwanda
Monday, September 14, 2009 at 2:30pm

Today was a day of preparation for our trip this week to Gishwati National Conservation Park in Rwanda’s Western Province. The morning and part of the afternoon was spent running errands. By midday we hit the road north to Ruhengeri at the base of the VIrunga Mountains and home to approximately 700 mountain gorillas in Rwanda, Uganda and Democratic Republic of Congo. We’ll visit next week one group of those gorillas in Volcanoes National Park.

From Ruhengeri we went west to Gisenyi located on the north end of Lake Kivu and the western border of Rwanda. Gisenyi serves as headquarters of the Gishwati Area Conservation Project. GACP is a joint project of Great Ape Trust, Earthpark and the Rwandan government. Just outside the GACP offices tonight, we viewed the orangish-pink glow of Mount Nyiragongo, an active volcano in the VIrunga chain. It is located in the DRC less than 15 miles from our location. Nyiragongo erupted in 2002 and forced the evacuation of 400,000 people from Goma, DRC across the border to Gisenyi.

On Tuesday morning, we depart for the chimpanzee research field station supported by GACP and directed by Dr. Rebecca Chancellor. 14 chimpanzees are isolated in this pocket of "forest of hope" called Gishwati.

On the road to Ruhengeri