Lake Kivu

Just a short one, because we're short on time. We trekked to see the mountain gorillas yesterday. Huffed and puffed through the 8,000-ft-elevation air for just over an hour up a steep mountainside, past farmer's terraced fields and through dense bamboo stands, and then stopped to drop our bags. Walked another 10 feet and there they were -- the gorillas. About a dozen of them, hanging out in a clearing. The only twins ever born to the mountain gorillas playing around on the shrubs. A big silverback glaring at us. Mothers yawning, showing off lion-ish teeth that look awfully sharp for a vegetarian species. We snapped and snapped and snapped away -- we only had an hour and wanted to make the best of it. Got a couple shots I'm not entirely embarrassed of.

Today we're in Gisenyi, a town on Rwanda's Lake Kivu that serves as the country's domestic resort centre. Haven't seen the lake yet but got a cheap and clean room at a local Presbyterian church. We're within spitting distance of the Democratic Republic of Congo, and a large volcano that mowed over one of its cities in 2002. Amazing the things you don't hear about in North America.

Got here on a mini-bus so jam-packed with locals that the only space for my enormous -- and heavy -- backpack was on my lap. So we bounced around winding mountain roads, me using all my strength to keep from having my bag fall into the guy next to me. They packed us in 4 across into a skinny little mini-bus. It seems the craziest African experiences are on the roads, but I'm starting to dig it. We ran into a Dutch guy who said he found this place such a breath of fresh air after living in such a stifling, controlled country like Holland. I guess there's something to be said for embracing the looseness. Africa's kind of cool.