I recently went on a trip to Rwanda for the ICLR 2023 conference. In this series of blog posts, I share some pictures taken during the trip.
My flight to Kigali had a connection at Brussels. I flew United from Newark to Brussels on Friday night and then Brussels Airlines to Kigali from Saturday morning to Saturday evening.
I arrived at my hotel at around 9 pm. The next day, I rose up at 4:30 am and went on a pre-arranged trip to Volcanoes National Park for a gorilla trekking tour. There was a 2.5 hour drive from Kigali to the park.
Gorilla trekking is one of the most well known tourist activity in Rwanda. Mountain gorillas are an endangered species. There are only two countries in the world that you can see them in a close distance: Rwanda and Uganda. The national parks charge expensive trekking permits to protect the species.
All tourists gathered at around 7:30 am at the park entrance, and we were divided into groups. Each group was assigned to a gorilla family. The guide taught us some basic gorilla communication words — the positive sound and the negative sound. Positive means friendliness and negative means aggressiveness.
Everyday, the gorilla family might be located at a different area, and the rangers helped us first identify their location so that we could hike directly towards there.
The rainforest hike was wet and muddy. I recommend wearing waterproof coat, hiking boots, and pants. There were also waterproof pant guards for rent at the tourist center.
After an hour hiking, we arrived at the resting location of the gorilla family. Our family is called “Kwitonda” which means humble. The family originated from the Democratic Republic of Congo, and later migrated to the Volcanoes National Park.
After an hour of photo shoot and standing beside the gorilla family, our trekking was finished and we started to hike back to the entrance point.
The gorilla tour finished around 12. People could also choose to stay around the national park to attend other activities. Since we were only there for a day, we headed back in the afternoon.
We visited a cultural center with souvenirs and local arts.
We had a lunch at local town center. We waited for an hour for the food to be served.
On our way back, I took some street photos in our car. People seemed to be more aware of the camera.
I will share more photos in follow-up posts. A quick note on my camera gears: I chose APS-C over full-frame for its lower cost and lighter weight. I used a Sony A6600 paired with a Sigma 18-50mm f2.8 and a Sony 70-350mm f4.5-6.3. I love the 70-350mm telephoto lens which delivers very sharp images at a full-frame equivalent of 105-525mm, while weighing only 600 grams.