Rwanda Safari

While we were in Rwanda, we got the opportunity to go with Robbie and Stephanie on a safari at Akagera National Park in the northeastern part of Rwanda.  The park was amazing and huge (took us 6 hours with stops to drive through it).  As large as the park was however, it had been much larger.  Prior to the Rwandan Genocide, the park was much bigger, but the government needed more land to give to refugees following the genocide and that came at the expense of the park.We got up at 4am and hopped on a bus and headed to the park and got back to Kigali around 5pm..a long, but awesomely fun day.  The drive through the park started at the south end where we saw a lot of the smaller animals...including flies :). We stopped for lunch near a small lake with Hippos and ate bagel sandwiches from J. Lynn's and continued on our journey.  The northern part of the park had more open plains where the larger animals liked to roam and where we saw zebras, giraffes, and other animals.It was so cool to see these animals, that I'd only before seen at a zoo, roaming around in their native home.  The landscape they were in was equally as beautiful.  The prairie grasses and the mountains in the park were gorgeous, it almost seemed surreal.  While I've come to enjoy the beauty in the architecture of cities made of glass, metal, and lights, and really enjoy photographing those things, nothing quite compares to the natural beauty of God's creation almost untouched from how it was made.  Also, in general Rwanda itself was breathtaking with its rolling hills and mountains that make me realize just how flat Illinois is.Hope you enjoy the photos of the wildlife below! This work by JD Maloney is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.