I have just ended a tour that took in Addis Ababa in Ethiopia, Rwanda & Uganda.

We flew Ethiopia Airlines from Heathrow to Addis, took another flight to the Rwandan capital of Kigali a few days later, travelled overland to Uganda and finally flew home from Entebbe via Addis once more.

Pending greater detail to come, here is a whistle stop revisit to our travels.

Ethiopia

Foreign Office advice is to either stay in the capital or venture south. This ruled out a trip to the rock hewn churches up north where there are continuing tribal conflicts.

So we stuck to Addis Ababa, staying in a hotel in Bole near the airport.

City sights including the two main Coptic Orthodox Cathedrals, a ride on the light rail system, a trip to the national museum to see the world’s oldest partial skeleton, 3.5 million year old ‘Lucy’.

We also visited the old imperial French railway station and drank coffee in Addis’s oldest coffee shop.

Rwanda

Kigali is super tidy, due in part to the compulsory monthly clean up all citizens of Rwanda must join in and partially due to the fact that the World UCI cycling championships were taking place there, the first time Africa had ever held the renowned global event.

Rwanda is most famous for two things – being home to mountain gorillas and the 1994 genocide that claimed around 1 million Tutsi lives at the hands of the Hutus. The Genocide Museum is both harrowing & healing. See my earlier post.

We also did an overnight trip to the Akagera National Park for a game drive and river safari.

Uganda

We were met at our Kigali hotel by James, our Ugandan driver & tour guide we had booked through Shoebill Tours of Kampala. James was beyond excellent – more of that later.

We drove north to the border for a swift and hassle free crossing. We had secured our $50 evisas back home.

Just 14km from the border we reached the town of Kisoro, our home for two nights. On the arrival afternoon we took a boat trip on Lake Mutanda to see African clawless otters and a myriad of aquatic birds including our favourite pied kingfishers.

The next day it was another early start to trek high up into the rainforest to see golden monkeys. The climb up was strenuous but we were rewarded with sightings of two family groups.

The walk down was worse as we encountered a torrential thunderstorm which shut of power in town. How I stayed standing as rivers formed around my feet, I will never know!

From there we drove to Lake Mburo for a game drive & walking safari before heading to Entebbe for tours of Lake Victoria, Mabamba Swamp, home of the amazing shoebill, Kampala city tour and a short train ride.

The real pleasure was just driving through towns and villages viewing authentic life and scores of birdlife including crown cranes and a shoebill stork.

James was incredibly knowledgable & courteous throughout. I would not hesitate to recommend him. See SHOEBILL TOURS for contact details.

More to come.