Back Home (Musanze)

This morning I went with Greg to pick up one of the tour operators at the airport from the UK. The visit was planned to discuss some future business opportunities for Greg and other Rwandan operators. A very important part of the visit was sorting out permits for their tours for the rest of the year which entailed paying deposits for all those permits as guarantee of their availability.

I joined Greg for some of the discussions and potential new projects in Rwanda were discussed - I won't divulge any details now but it will be a pleasant surprise for a lot of people. I set off back to Musanze with some gorilla permits Greg had asked to give to one of the overland groups that had arrived that day.

I knew the crew, so had a couple of drinks with them and their clients and discussing Rwanda and of course, the gorillas. There was also some sad news that their head office had banned their trucks from entering Rwanda so the tour leaders had to source local transport in Uganda and come in that way with their clients. I'm not really sure what the reasoning is behind that decision but hopefully we can get them to change their minds on that eventually.

Discovered that this group had a departure time for the ORTPN office up at Kinigi, half an hour later than they should be departing to reach there in time. I'll meet with one of the tour leaders early morning and go up there with my car so we can tell ORTPN that the group is on their way but will be 15 minutes late - otherwise they think the group is not coming and may use the permits for people waiting to see if they can get some leftover permits.