Crazy beautiful Golden Monkeys at Volcanoes NP 10/18/18

Up early to catch the golden monkey tour, plus we just don't sleep late. We had no tickets or reservations but Alex at the hotel said it wouldn't be a problem (from what we understood). The hotel prepared us a breakfast of a whole plate of fruit (yay I can eat this all day!), one fruit was crazy tart- it was a tree tomato- but it looked cool, plus we had bread and eggs. Alex found us a driver for half price. Paying $80 for a "whole day" was ridiculous when we only needed a car to take us down to the registration, back up the hill to the hiking entrance. Even $40 was ridic but whatever.

We were in a group with a bunch of old white people. The hike was easy, up through some of the locals' farm fields to the bamboo trees at the bottom of the volcano. The locals don't mind us walking through. They get 10% proceeds from the tours, plus they get reimbursed for any damage done by the animals from the NP. That's one way to make sure they don't poison the animals.

We hiked for maybe 30 min and we were at the bamboo forest and the monkeys were everywhere! The guide let us walk around to get a bit closer to the monkeys. The monkeys were beautiful and constantly moving. The guide had said we could tell the males because of the swagger when they walk. The female movements are more all over the place and "unstable". I LOLd along with another female in the group. The monkeys were breaking the bamboo trees to eat the insides. It was funny watching them try to snap a large tree. Others were playing, fighting, jumping from tree to tree. It was quite the site for the whole hour.

Afterwards we walked back to the hotel, a short hike through a village. Some guys started talking to Andy. I think their intent was just to talk to a tourist. They left when Alex showed up on the road with umbrellas for us. This guy is full service. Alex then took our shoes to clean them when we arrived at the hotel. The sun finally came out so this was our chance to put our tent away.

We had one last large meal from the hotel and left on the boda bodas down the hill after 2. It only cost us $3 for both of our rides into town, about 30+ min. They took us directly to the bus station, not the large bus, the small ones that are pretty much just vans. Andy and I got some of the last seats in the van- the ones that fold down in the aisle. We were ready for people to start piling in, but not here in Rwanda! Everyone has a seat! The ride to Kigali was peaceful over the large mountain. Lots of big turns but it wasn't terrible since we had our own seats. Just $6 total for our 2 hour ride to the capital.

We ended up taking a taxi when we arrived Kigali because it had been raining, it's a large city unknown, and we had our huge backpacks. The city is large and really spread out over non-grid roads. Andy asked for the perks of the hotel- pool? Umm no, we paid $30/night. I'm not ready for expensive yet!

It was time to relax. There didn't seem to be too much around the Corina K Guesthouse. Let's grab a beer first. I went with the Amstel and Andy went with the Mutzig. Then another. Then some beef samosas. The food was pretty good, it was like a beef hot pocket. Total our bill was $9! Our wifi was strong so Andy was happy, we even had it in our room. The warm shower was lukewarm but it did the job. We had a large clean hotel room, we were set for an early night.