Akagera National Park

Sunday we went to Akagera National Park, which rests on Rwanda's Eastern border with Tanzania. The elevation is lower, being part of the Great Rift Valley, and is filled with swamps and lakes that attract the wildlife.

It was once quite a bit bigger (it's a third of its original size) and had a higher population of elephants and lions, but in the chaos following the genocide in 1994, there was no protection for the animals. As a result, farmers with cows like these:
would poison the carcasses of cows killed by lions, greatly reducing the lion population here. (Our guide, Samuel, has worked at Akagera since 1997, and has only encountered lions three times.) Other game was driven out by poachers and settlers. After the genocide, the government gave the Western portion of the park to refugees to return to and settle. So this is a park that is struggling, but could potentially be among the great game reserves of Africa; it contains a wide variety of terrains that allows animals to stay year-round, instead of migrating to distant water sources. It's relatively unknown; we only saw a couple other cars the whole time we were there. And it's home to several varieties of antelope- we saw impalas, waterbuck, Cape buffaloes, topi, and giant eland.

Topi (can run 55 mph)

Cape Buffalo- by himself. He had a broken leg.

Baboon family

L-R- Antonina, her husband Dmitri, guide Samuel, driver Gervais

Giraffe, obviously

We also saw zebras, hippos, warthogs, baboons, various birds, and (my favorite encounter) a 4-5 ft cobra that slithered across the road in front of us. (UPDATE: based on my extensive Googling, I think it was likely some variety of spitting cobra. The black-necked spitting cobra [naja nigricollis] is most common, so it was probably that. They can 'spit' venom accurately up to 10 feet or 3 m.) It was a pretty cool trip, I'll have to return some day during the rainy season when more animals are around.