Hotel Gorillas

Before I forget, I absolutely have to write about the Hotel Gorillas / Gorillas Hotel (not sure which is right), located on the hillside in lovely Kigali. Now despite my initial misgivings about staying at a place with such a name, Gorillas turned out to be just fine... though CERTAINLY not without humor. Interestingly enough, in the past week, the Gorillas redid their website and it's now quite a Java/HTML masterpiece (Gorillas are good at coding and web design, you know). But before I left, the site was pretty basic and advertised two amenities: (1) 24-hour hot water, and (2) satellite TV. Upon my arrival, I found one very important thing missing. (Wanna guess?) Yup, hot water. I arrived at the Gorillas on a Saturday night, and I think the first time the Gorillas managed to pump me some hot water was Tuesday or Wednesday. How about the SAT TV, you ask? Well, if you consider two channels to be "Satellite TV" - those two channels being none other than SkyTV's Sports network and the HALLMARK CHANNEL - then yes. (Hallmark? for real? of all the channels in the world... anyways.)

So I spent a lovely week with the Gorillas, staying in this exact room:


I got this pic from the website, but I think every room looks exactly like this so it basically could have been my room. The window faced the main road, and across the street was a large farm. (Down the street a block was the Kigali institute of Forensics. interesting.) Anyways, and on the farm, there was a ROOSTER! (ee-yi-ee-yi ... oh never mind.) He liked to crow specifically from 6am to 7am. That's one set o'lungs to go that strong for a full hour, I tell ya. What the picture is missing, though, is the really large, loud fan that I parked right next to the pillow at all times. As hard as a tried to open every window to get some air in the room, the Gorillas were determined to keep my room shut in and totally stuffy. (Gorillas like to sleep outside, so I'm not sure why they don't understand the concept of air flow.)

One thing about the Gorillas, though, is that they CAN cook. (Food in Kigali overall leaves something to be desired, but somehow this slightly funny, slightly-off hotel had one of the best restaurants in the city.) But they have a lot of trouble handling money when you want to pay for anything. For some reason, nobody ever has any CHANGE. About five times, I saw someone take off running down the road (to the Forensics lab??) in search of bills to make change. Once I had the HOTEL DRIVER spot me a few francs from his tip money because nobody else had any change (it was super nice, but REALLY). Here is a pic of the entrance to the restaurant (quite pretty):


All in all, the Gorillas provided a safe and clean place for a week in Kigali... especially if you like roosters, unpredictable water temps, and Hallmark. TIA!