Nyungwe National Park

In the ferns

February 27, 2014April 13, 2016 Cindy at enclos*ure5 Comments

the elegant script of ferns. . .*

Last February, we took our visiting oldest daughter to Nyungwe National Park and hiked the first half of the trail that includes a tree canopy walkway. Last week, with second daughter and friend in tow, we completed the entire circuit.

The hike started with us tucking our pants legs into our socks (against ants) and receiving walking sticks.

Although the paths are well-maintained, the sticks are necessary for the steeper, sometimes slippery sections.

The steps shown above are the first of many, many, many on a long descent to the canopy walkway. (The welcome center is at one of the highest points in the park.)

It was a hazy day, so I can’t show you the great mountain views that are otherwise visible along the way, but you can click here to see my photos from last February.

Photo by L. Koran — Photo by Laura Koran

Above: Our guide led the way. He spotted a number of blue monkeys and turaco birds for us.**

(The earth walls that were cut when the trail was created — to the right of the guide above — bring the smaller plants of the forest floor to almost eye level. I’ve put pictures and names of some of them in a photo gallery, which you can scroll through by clicking on ‘Continue reading’ at the end of this post.)

Above: We arrive at the beginning of the canopy walkway.

Above: The middle and highest section is 187′ (57 m.) above the ground.

During last year’s visit, with only the three of us and the guide, the walkway swung less, and I stopped a few times to look down and take pictures. (You can see them here.)

This time, in a group of about fifteen — with eight people crossing the walkway at a time — the shaking made me keep my eyes on the back of the person in front of me.

Above: Our guide starts across.

Above: I did look down after I reached the top of the second tower.

Above: Back on the ground below the second tower.

When you cross the middle section of the walkway and (dare to) look down, you see a narrow valley of tree ferns and hear the moving water of a stream. The second half of the hike continues on to that valley. There, we saw hundreds of the tall ferns.

In fact, this trail is named — in Kinyarwanda — for the tree ferns: the Igishigishigi Trail.

Cyathea manniana is one of two tree ferns in the park. The other is C. dregei. Manniana only grows in undisturbed forest, while dregei can be found along the sides of the road through the park (it also has persistent old leaves).

Above: Looking up into the ferns. C. manniana can grow to almost 20′ (6 m.) tall.

“C. manniana is traditionally used as a medical plant to treat snake bites,” according to my field guide.*** There are nine kinds of snakes in the park, but only one is poisonous.

Above: A small bridge crosses the stream that we heard from the canopy walkway. The guide meant to take us down to the water, but there were too many biting ants on the path.

Tree ferns are one of my favorite plants, but unfortunately, they would not grow well in the cold or the heat of our Washington, D.C., garden.

Above: Leaving the ferns behind, we started back to the welcome center.

The Igishigishigi Trail is 1.3 miles (2.1 km.) long and takes 1 1/2 to 2 hours. It is rated ‘easy,’ but a large part of it involves descending and ascending steps. It’s a solid workout.

The trail begins at an elevation of 8,038′ (2450 m.) and descends to 7,530′ (2295 m.).

Above (on the right): Nearing the final set of steps, we found a large group of Lobelia gibberoa or giant lobelias.

With their long candles of greenish white flowers, the plants can grow to 29′ (9 m.) in height. Latex from the stems is traditionally used to treat irritation from stinging nettles.

Above: After the hike, we went back to the Nyungwe Forest Lodge on the Huye-Rusizi Road. The yellow flowers along the edge are a Senecio species.

*from “Ex Libris” by Eleanor Wilner.

** It’s also quite possible to see turacos flying from tree to tree from the pool at the Nyungwe Forest Lodge.

***An excellent book about the park is the Illustrated Field Guide to the Plants of Nyungwe National Park [of] Rwanda by Eberhard Fischer and Dorothee Killman. It’s 770 pages long, with color photographs of 650 plants. You can buy a copy here. Unfortunately, it’s $71. Some copies were printed for the Rwandan tourism office, and I bought mine in a Kigali bookstore for about $25, but I haven’t seen any on sale here for about a year.

In the tea

February 26, 2014February 26, 2014 Cindy at enclos*ure9 Comments

My daughter and her friend visited us last week — after hiking to the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro. (It took them seven days, and my daughter reached the summit during a blizzard with lightning!)

While they were here in Rwanda, we went down to the southwest to see Nyungwe National Park, the largest protected mountainous rain forest in Africa.

We spent two nights at the Nyungwe Forest Lodge, which I know I’ve written about twice before. But I still wanted to post these photos, because I find its landscape so serene. . . and so romantic — a tea garden at the edge of a rain forest.

The design is simple, yet extravagant — a few curving paths through thousands of Camellia sinensis bushes.

Above: the pool house in early morning.

We arrived on Wednesday in early afternoon. There was a lot of mist, and it was so chilly that we turned on our room’s heater for about an hour. But it only rained once, briefly, during our stay.

Above: the Lodge gatehouse.

Above: the Lodge in the distance.

Above: yellow native Crassocephalum montuosum poking up through the tea bushes.

Above and below: views from the main building’s porch.

Above and below: narrow paths through the field. A local cooperative picks the tea and keeps the income from its sale.

Above: The cabins, with two to four rooms each, are sited at the edge of the tea field.

Above: the bushes around the Lodge looked like they had been picked recently. Only the terminal bud and the top two leaves of each stem are plucked off.

Above and below: the front of each cabin is planted with native perennials and small trees from the forest.

Above: these giant lobelias (Lobelia gibberoa) are planted right into the grass and other low ~~weeds~~ wild plants.

Above: each cabin’s back balcony looks out into the rain forest. The land drops down very steeply about six or seven feet behind the cabins, so their windows really look into the tops of trees. It’s not uncommon to see monkeys there.

The canopy walk, Nyungwe Forest

June 12, 2013April 13, 2016 Cindy at enclos*ure11 Comments

Last February, I wrote about our stay at the Nyungwe Forest Lodge. Recently, however, I realized that I have never given you a look inside the forest.

The Nyungwe National Park, in the southwest of Rwanda, is 393 square miles of mountain forests, swamps, and moorland.

It has over 80 miles of constructed trails, but during our two-night stay at the lodge, we mainly wanted to relax — so we decided to walk the 1.3 mile Igishigishigi Trail, which includes a canopy walkway suspended 197′ above the ground.

The trail begins at the Uwinka Visitor Center, which was renovated three years ago with U.S. assistance.

The center’s interpretative display features panels on the mountain rainforest and Nyungwe’s biodiversity, its people, and its role in the Congo-Nile watershed. The text is in Kinyarwanda, English, and French.

Below are the steps leading to the Igishigishigi Trail. The shadow with the camera was me, the one on the left was our visiting daughter, who was wondering what she had gotten herself into.

The view near the beginning of the trail is wonderful. Uwinka is at one of the highest points in the park.

In the left lower corner above, you can just see one of the towers that support the canopy walk.

Below is the trail,

which includes several sections of steps. The trail begins at 8,038′ and descends to 7,530′.

It sometimes passes along more open woodland, below.

We came across benches from time to time, although this double arrangement, below, didn’t look very comfortable.

Several species of trees are labeled like this one.

The Parinari excelsa (or Umunazi in Kinyarwanda) grows to heights of 82′ to 131′ with a thick, cauliflower-shaped crown,

way up there.

An assortment of ferns, mosses, lichens, and orchids live on the magnificent trees

and on the forest floor.

One of the more common, and easily recognizable, plants along the trail is the giant lobelia, below.

There are two species of giant lobelias in the park. I think these are Lobelia gibberoa (or Intomvu in Kinyarwanda).

After the explorer Johannes Mildbraed first saw this plant in Nyungwe in 1907, he wrote:

[It] would have awakened the interest of the veriest dullard at botany. . . . When I first espied these strange shapes. . . my heart beat fast at the realization of a long-hoped-for sight, a feeling that is comparable only to that of a hunter at the first sight of some rare game.

The one above was only a few feet tall, but more mature specimens towered over our heads.

After about 45 minutes, we arrived at the canopy walk.

In the photo below, our guide was explaining to us how the suspended bridges can support two cars, or twenty cars, or five elephants, or something like that.

Oh, why not. . .

Below: looking down from the platform of the first tower. . .

Below, we started out onto the middle and highest section. . .

and began to look down.

It is unsurprisingly difficult to take pictures while standing on a 12″ wide swaying walkway.

Below, you can see the tops of tree ferns, for which the trail is named (in Kinyarwanda), and we could hear water from a hidden stream.

A park guidebook says, “The walkway is strong and secure but will provide the visitor with a definite burst of adrenaline.”

In the photo above, taken from the walkway, you can see what I think are the young reddish-rose leaflets of Carapa grandiflora. There is a wonderful full-color field guide on the plants of the park (here*), but, of course, mine was sitting back home on my desk during our trip. However, I’m sure this was the best thing for my relationships with my husband and daughter, not to mention the guide.

Although the forest is home to many species of birds and monkeys, we did not see any along this trail — possibly because the popular walk is a bit noisy with humans talking. But we saw both blue and L’Hoest’s monkeys along the road on the drive back to the lodge and from the balconies of our rooms. And there is another park trail that features groups of chimpanzees.

And the next day, when we were almost out of the park, we spotted this guy, below, and a friend walking along the side of the road (photo by M. Koran).

To scroll through larger version of the images, click on ‘Continue reading’ below and on any thumbnail in the gallery.

*Sometimes you can find it here in Rwanda at bookstores or museum shops. However, they were not selling it at the park or lodge when we were there.
Continue reading “The canopy walk, Nyungwe Forest” →

Nice things and Nyungwe Forest Lodge

February 12, 2013April 13, 2016 Cindy at enclos*ure7 Comments

I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, “If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

Our oldest daughter has been visiting us — which is very nice — so this weekend, we took her to see the Nyungwe Forest in the south of Rwanda and to stay at the beautiful Nyungwe Forest Lodge.

Nyungwe Forest Lodge, enclos*ure — Orchids and tea bushes in front of the cabins at Nyungwe Forest Lodge.

The Lodge is located on the western edge of the Nyungwe National Park in a tea plantation picked by a local cooperative. The cabins front to the tea fields and their back windows look out on the forest.

The area is currently having clear blue mornings and rainy afternoons. On Saturday, our one full day there, we hiked the canopy walk before lunch (more on that later this week). Then we actually talked about going on another hike that afternoon.

However, with the first raindrops, we gave in to the luxury of just parking ourselves in front of the many picture windows looking out on the gorgeous view and napping and reading until the 5:00 p.m. tea, cookies, and cocktails in front of a fire.

Lounge at Nyungwe Forest Lodge, enclos*ure — The lounge at the Lodge. Photo by Mary Koran.

Just before tea time, we were rewarded for our indolence by finding about a dozen blue monkeys in the trees right outside our cabin’s back patios.

Blue monkey at Nyungwe Forest Lodge, enclos*ure — A blue monkey (Cercopithecus mitts) about to jump from cabin roof to the trees. Photo by Mary Koran.

I wanted to show you these side tables in the main lounge, which I loved.

Unfortunately, I forgot to ask if they were locally made or imported — next time.

The big chandelier was appropriately made of tea strainers.

Camellia sinensis leaves have little or no smell (only if you crush them hard) until they are processed as tea. But the hotel smelled very lightly of green tea fragrance from the soap and hand lotion in the bathrooms and gift shop. So, sitting on the terrace or in the main lounge looking out, I could smell what I thought the fields should smell like (but really don’t). I thought this was an interesting little manipulation of experience in a landscape.

My daughter brought me a Kindle Fire e-reader, another really nice thing, which allowed me to spend the afternoon switching from Vogue, to the third book of the Game of Thrones series, to Hilary Mantel’s Bring Up the Bodies.

I’ve written about Nyungwe Forest Lodge previously here.

Nyungwe Forest Lodge

August 28, 2012August 17, 2017 Cindy at enclos*ure5 Comments

Last month, we finally made a trip to southwest Rwanda, after having rescheduled twice since the spring. For me, the chief attraction of the three-day visit — which involved many hours on some very rough and curvy roads — was the drive through the 378 square mile Nyungwe National Park, one of the most species-rich mountainous rain forests in Africa.

We also spent two nights at the wonderful Nyungwe Forest Lodge, possibly the best hotel in Rwanda. (Above: early morning breakfast at the Lodge.)

Located on the western edge of the park, the lodge offers beautiful views of two environments: the natural forest of the park and the agricultural fields of a tea plantation.

The cabins rest on the very edge of a field of tea. And their back-facing picture windows look into the forest trees (monkey sightings are common and guests are warned to close windows and doors at night).

The road leading to the Lodge passes through bright green acres of tea bushes.

A local cooperative picks the tea (right up to the lodge and cabin doors) and keeps the income from its sales.

(Above: the road to the lodge and a tea collection shed.)

The (tea-side) entrances to the cabins are landscaped with plants from the forest. The Lodge was not allowed to bring any other plants onto its grounds.

The cabins are built on posts, lifting them off the ground.

Above are some of the plants at the entrance to our cabin. I think the tree fern in the center background is a Cyathea manniana (a.k.a., Alsophila manniana). I haven’t been able to identify the plant in the foreground. Way in the back on the right is a wild banana (Musa ensete).

Unmown wild grass grows along the paths and among the larger plants. I believe the small tree in the center, above, is an Anthocleista grandiflora. I think the plants just to the right of it are Lobelia gibberoa.

A park trail entrance is located near the Lodge grounds. Guests are not allowed to hike, however, without paying the park fee and taking an official guide. Both can be arranged at the Lodge.

The main Lodge building (with the lounge, bar, and restaurant) rests in the center of the tea field.

The interior is beautiful, as well. (Above: a wall of Rwandan pottery.)

The tea grows right up to the foundations of all the buildings. (Above: the main building terrace with rain chains.)

The tea bushes are mulched with the branches cut in the last pruning.

The Lodge’s main paths are earth-colored concrete and are set slightly below the level of the tea field.

The smaller paths are also partially hidden below the tea.

Orange Kalanchoe crenata plants line the paths.

Above is the view of the forest from the pool. The trees are full of monkeys (we learned to look for shaking branches; then we saw them everywhere).

There’s one (above.)

He jumps.

And lands. (OK, my nature photography is not so good.)

Here’s a slightly better picture. It’s a L’Hoest’s monkey (Cercopithecus lhoesti).

Unfortunately, our travel schedule didn’t allow time to hike the park. But my plan is to return as soon as possible. Many people come to Rwanda to see the mountain gorillas in the north, but the Nyungwe Forest is equally remarkable, and tourists should soon begin to see it as good reason to spend more time (and money) in the country. (Tourism is Rwanda’s number one revenue producer, followed by tea and coffee exports.)

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