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.