Wild Beauty

I have fallen terribly behind in blog posting! All these publish-worthy experiences are piling up on me. So don't assume that just because it is the last week of my visit(oh sadness, I can't believe it has come so quickly!), I will not be writing much. I am going to try my bestest to catch you up before I am caught up in serious packing! (yuck)


Sunday a week ago I had the delight of visiting Akagera, a game park in eastern Rwanda. We were praying for good weather; well, it started raining in really early Sunday morning, and when we pulled out at 5:30, it was still going strong. We hoped to drive out of the rain quickly, but it didn't let up until we were fairly close to Akagera. And God held the rain off the whole time we drove through the park! Chuck had tried to find someone with a four wheel drive who would take us, because they only have a small car now. They had a Land Rover for a few months and it was perfect for this terrain. They had hoped to take all their workers to Akagera sometime in the Land Rover, but sadly it was totaled a few months ago by some tourists who were renting it. We weren't able to borrow a vehicle, but we were told the car would probably do okay in the north end of the park, as the roads there are better. So we planned to visit only the north end. The whole park is quite extensive. Here is what we saw as were driving into the park entrance!





We saw tons of gazelle variations. These are the two most common kinds we saw.


Impala


Topi


Adorable!

I don't remember what this guy is called, but I think he's the biggest of the gazelle species.


We slid our way through a lot of mud puddles, but the little car was a real trooper, and Chuck is a skilled driver.


Cactus tree

We sighted many varieties of African birds as well. I can't tell you names, but here is one of the prettier ones I caught.


Here's a bonus for you.... apparently this old guy wandered up from the river and expired here. Can you guess what he was?

I'll give you a hint: it starts with H.

We asked our guide about giraffes and he said they are usually in the southern end of the park. We asked him if he thought our car could drive in that part and he thought it was possible. So we decided to drive down to the south. We had to take the long, winding dirt road from the park all the way back to the main road and head south, then take another long dirt road down into that end of Akagera. It took us about 2 hours between the two.

I believe this is a starling. They were in a tree along with a kind of weaver bird at the entrance building in the southern end. I love the color here!


We picked up another guide and took off into the bush, looking for giraffes. After slogging through a few worrisome mud holes, we had to turn around and try a different direction. Someone else knew where the giraffes were and was in contact with our guide. At last we found them!



It was so cool to see these guys in their natural habitat. We were able to walk up pretty close to them. They just stand there like natural posers.


Their Swahili name is twiga. I think that's cooler than giraffe!

We saw several of these guys, but they are fast! We finally got a good shot at them.


After leaving the giraffes, we headed down to see what I consider about the most beautiful part of the day. We went down the long red road to this gorgeous lake! It had rained more as we were on our way from the north end to the south end but stopped when we got back into the park. By the time we drove to the lake, the sky was clearing and it was such a rapturous picture with the deep blue and the puffy white clouds and the reflections in the water. God was so kind to us with the weather!





We got to see chimpanzees by the lake! I didn't get many good shots of them because I was taking video.


This guy is a little blurry but he gives an impressive figure.


I was so happy; I got a great close-up of an eagle in the wild, even if he is an African eagle. I think they are different from American eagles.


A few hippos were poking up from the water and this one gave me a headshot before disappearing beneath the surface.


They said some elephants and panthers live in Akagera, but it is very hard to catch a glimpse of them. There used to be lions, but after the war, people returning to Rwanda began settling right up on the borders of the park and the government let them have the land for cattle raising. Often the cattle would stray into the park and the wild animals would stray outside. All the lions were eventually killed by the cattle farmers because they came out and killed cattle.

Here's to an awesome day in the wild and thumbs up to our brave little mudrunner! It looked worse than the picture shows. The guards had fun cleaning it the next day!