The smell of freshly mown grass

I am sitting here smelling the mown grass that is being raked outside by the gardeners in the hotel as the sun beats down!  You, on the other hand, can probably not even see the grass let alone smell it!  I always find the smells that remind one that one is not at home so rousing.  The hotel smells like frangipani which I usually associate with Asia - sweet smelling and definitely a hot country smell.  Alan Titchmarsh proclivities nothwithstanding though, the city smells very much like being at an old car raleigh! Remember the time of leaded petrol and fumes - well Kigali smells a bit like that and will be on the air pollution radar before long me thinks.

And I understand why it is called the Land of a Thousand Hills as had we walked back from the centre to the hotel, I think we would have probably gone up and down 3 fairly decent hills which obviously makes the thought of a push bike way less appealing!  Maybe Gisenyi will be somewhat less undulating - there is apparently a decent mountain biking track which afficionados could do in between 4-10 days which obviously begs the question as to how much of that I would be able to see from the tranquility of the Hotel Serena terrace which I am already loving as it has fast wireless access and may be a haven for a bit of luxury when needed. 

So 1 more day of Kigali  -maybe a trip to the genocide museum and finish Romeo Dallaire's book entitled Shaking Hands with the Devil which is his story of the 1994 Rwandan genocide from his perspective of being in charge of the UN peacekeeping force at the time.  Harrowing stuff but hard to believe it happened looking at the amount of building work and thriving economic hub that Kigali seems to be developing into.  So I hope that I can do justice to putting the country on the map for reasons other than its somewhat tragic past.

The Wildebeest Camp

Well here we are in Ahfricah -dahling!!  Flight was good - turned out to be only 8 hours as there is a 3 hours time difference between Kenya and the UK and managed to get through Sex and the City 2 as well as Inception! 

Very bizarre considering that we woke up yesterday to an inch or so of snow as we left and it is now minus 1 or 2 and yet we woke up this morning to 20+ degrees and bright sunshine.  We were kept away by what was probably the loca disco until 4 am but hey - if it feels like Club Med then why not boogie the night away like Club Med - well ish!

Slept in a big tent with on ensuite which was lovely and had breakfast and now lunch on the terrace.  Lots of tropical looking greenery around as well as the first lizard scamping around the palm trees.

Electricity has already conked out twice so am going to post and then load some photos soon.

Hope it is not too cold but keep your mittens handy!
xx

Only 2 days to go - malaria tablets start today!

Well we have 1 post and no followers as yet - how rubbish is that!!  Anyway obviously things are going smoothly and we have everything under control!!  To be fair, most things are but it does seem as if what can go wrong is doing so at the moment - whose law is that?? Mr Bugger's no doubt.

Anyway we flight to Nairobi on saturday and stay overnight at http://www.wildebeestcamp.com/ which was recommended to us by the lovely Di and we are in a deluxe tent cos it seems like an idea to get as much relative luxury in before who knows what!

Fly to Kigali on sunday and hang out for a couple of days and then do our induction on 1st December before travelling 2 -3 hours west to Gisenyi on the 2nd.

So keep you fingers crossed that we don't forget anything crucial and that it is easy for me to berble in this manner when I am there!  I know - bet you can hardly wait!! xx

Vaccinations completed - 3 weeks and 5 days to go before Rwanda here we come!

So this blogging business is going to be interested and we are going to be learning as we go so bear with us!  Ideally we will be posting beautiful photos of things we have seen and experienced as well as video links of us with Lake Kivu in the background.  In reality it may just be a colossal rant about how difficult it is to either get on line or upload said niceties!  Or I may still be complaining about Tim accidentally hitting my 'rabies' arm which I apparently tensed when she put enough stuff in to floor a horse;-)
Anyway I am going to post our first post and check that the blog address works so that we can send it to you and you can live our antics with us vicariously:-)

Tim and Lynn x