23: Kigali to Queen elisabeth NP (Rwanda/Uganda)

Pictures Here:

Week 23 Update:

Lake Saki, Gisenyi, Parc National Des Volcans, Lake Bunyonyi, Queen Elisabeth National Park.

Day 155:

We had decided to get up early and that was exactly what we did. It was a pristine morning next to the lake complete with fisherman in dug out canoes wearing bright orange shirts. The only reason for this I could think of was that it was some kind of uniform, identifying a certain group, or village. The staff of the lodge was also up early and seemed to be preparing for something big. It was Friday, so I guessed they were preparing for a weekend conference of some sorts.

After braving the terrible facilities we set of towards our first memorial for the day. No visit to Rwanda could ever be complete without paying your respects to those poor souls who perished in the 1994 Genocide, but nothing, and I mean nothing could ever prepare you for the day that lay ahead of us.

I have been putting off writing this chapter about our travels until the emotion of what we experienced subsided a little. There is no way to explain the sights or the experiences without expressing emotion, but I have decided to try my very best to portray an accurate, objective account of the horror that was our day. The single most important fact about what Rwanda went through in the spring of 1994 was that the whole world without exception turned their backs on a human crisis reviled only by the most gruesome of tragedies the same world vowed to never allow again. If you read the short histories of the preceding years, weeks and days and the trigger that set it all off, you can clearly (In hindsight I have to admit) see all the warning signs. You reed about “Juan-Pierre” who was an informant who warned the UN about what was about to happen and how despite the UN commander’s pleading requests, the UN decided to do nothing to stop the events. You hear about the French government who provided $12m of arms to the perpetrators who still used clubs and machetes and their bear hands to slaughter their friends, neighbours and countrymen. It was all, honestly, a little too much for me to absorb and in the same time I feel as if every major city in the world should have a memorial similar to the ones we found to remind the world about how they turned their backs on a pleading nation on a daily basis. Shame on every person who knew about the events and who did nothing to stop them from happening.

Our first memorial was the Nyamata Church, some 30km south of Kigali. We had driven past a few memorial sights in the preceding few days but deemed ourselves too tired to deal with the perceived shock and emotional strength we would need. The church in Nyamata was one of the numerous places around the country where Tutsi people were hiding and one of the numerous places in the country where the death squads stormed in and killed every man, woman and child using whatever they could to perform their gruesome task. When walking into the church you are faced with bundles and bundles of clothing. At first glance it simply looks like someone had strewn old rags across the benches and the floor. Then you realize, with a shock that the clothes on display was actually worn by the people who were murdered there. With that shocking revelation you start to notice how much clothing you are actually looking at before you see the stains of blood on the clothes, the floors, the windows and the walls. This is even before you notice the bullet holes in the walls and roof which all renders you speechless shocked into an emotional numbness you can con comprehend or explain. This is even before you notice the amount of dresses, and children’s shoes around and before you notice the display of a single spear and club, explaining the weapons used on the day. The whole place was protected by a new, modern and massive tin roof to preserve the horror for the world to see. We were shown to no less than five mass graves, all with staircase access so intimate that you had to touch the coffins to keep your balance. One of these displayed raw skulls and bigger bones, femurs I thought, of some of the victims. I made a quick calculation, counting the columns and rows and came to the startling conclusion that I was staring at the remains of over 500 people… in one of five graves. Photography was not allowed, but I so wished I could take photographs and publish them, for the cruel world to see. We left there feeling empty.

The next memorial, perhaps the most graphic in the country, was the church at Ntarama. This small Catholic church, complete with kindergarten school also had a modern tin roof over the complex to preserve it. Apart from that, neither the church, nor the other buildings had been touched since the corpses were removed 16 years before. We were met by Elisabeth, the caretaker who unemotionally, and in French, which I did not understand, explained the events that took place there. She picked up the skull of a small child with a spear still sticking into it, gesturing the force that was used in the rage which was a killing spree and the utter and unexplainable hatred that was felt against the people who were innocently hiding there. As with the first memorial, the clothes of the victims were placed on the benches and hanged from the rafters to remind visitors of the sheer number of people who were involved. Elisabeth explained to us that 5 000 people were killed there in one day. 5000!!!! In one day!!!!! Next she took us to the kitchen and showed and explained to us where the female cook had been sleeping, with her baby in her arms and how the death squad had killed her by setting her, the baby and the mattress on fire. You could still see the melted clothing and shoes on the floor and the burnt clothing around. I wanted to leave, close my eyes and forget the images and ideas floating around in my imagination at once. I wanted to “denounce” the memories I gathered that morning and hide them away as distant nightmares which had no basis for reality. At the same time I felt it important to absorb the information and the images as a reminder of the atrocities the cruel world should never forget.

The last room in the complex we were taken to was a nursery school. It was small and neat with built in benches and a place for a teacher to stand. It had one door and a hole in the wall on the opposite side. It was explained that the gang broke through the wall after not being able to gain access through the door and as Elisabeth pointed at a dark patch on the wall I shook my head in disbelief. The Interahamwe (The death squads) picked up babies and toddlers, one by one and threw them against the brick wall repeatedly until they were dead… while the rest of the room had to watch. They reportedly raped the woman and left them barely alive, only to repeat themselves and then kill them with machetes and clubs and spears.

How do you do that? What kind of person does it take to hate human life so much that he could live with the knowledge that he did that? I could not at the time and would probably never be able to comprehend it. I had to leave.

We drove in absolute silence, engrossed in our own horrible thoughts, on the edge of breaking down in tears, to the Genocide Museum and Memorial in Kigali.

The impressive building, funded by foreign donations had a much more formal and little less shocking outlook on things. It concentrated more on the educational side than the stark gruesomeness and I felt it was exceptionally well planned and presented. Entrance was free, but an Audio guide cost about $10. The guide explained the significance and symbolism of the gardens which I also though was really well done. It took you past a few rows of mass graves containing the remains of some 2 000 victims per grave, explaining that newly discovered remains was still brought there from the country side. Some of the graved had not been sealed yet.

The inside of the museum first concentrated on the history of Rwanda, explaining how people used to live in ethnic harmony until the westerners came and “classified” the tribes. The Tutsi were classified as cattle herders and anyone with more than 10 cattle automatically became part of that tribe. The Hutu, the majority, was everyone with less than 10 cattle. The westerners instantly created division and the hatred, or animosity started immediately. The Tutsi (Minority) were given positions of power and decades later, when the powers that were discovered their “mistake”, the Tutsi were removed from power and the same positions were given to Hutu. The Hutu press and people in highest power described the Tutsi as “cockroaches” openly and printed a cartoon of Hutu troops marching over coffins, stretching to the horizon. Still the world was surprised when the proverbial volcano blew its top and the lava engulfed the nation, killing more than 1 000 000 people in around 100 days?

The second part of the exhibition was about the Genocide itself and how it could have, and should have been prevented. I forget the finer detail, but it was seriously obvious what the solutions at the time were and all the right people were in fact in place to stop the events. In fact, the one comment I do remember wad that the amount of troops that were deployed to evacuate the expiates would have been more than enough to stop the Genocide in its tracks. Instead, the only outside military influence came too late when the French sent some troops and the only thing they managed to accomplish was to provide an easy escape route for the perpetrators to flee to the neighbouring Burundi and DRC Congo…

The third part of the exhibition explained about other Genocides the world had seen. The Herero people who were killed by the Germans in Namibia before the First World War was something I never knew about. Ethnic cleansing in Cambodia which I never knew about. The Holocaust which everyone knows about and Bosnia which received wide spread media coverage and UN intervention. What shocked me most was the fact that the Rwanda Genocide happened when I was 19 years old. I had just left my military service then and I was watching TV news and reading newspaper headlines on a daily basis. Sixteen years later I was standing in Kigali, trying to imagine a city covered in corpses where reportedly dogs were feeding of the rotten flesh of their owners and could not recall a single bit of information I read or heard at the age of 19. South Africa had its own paranoia about new political eras to concentrate on, but surely someone should have notices something?

Refusing another night in the city, we headed towards the northern part of Kivu Lake and the town of Gisenyi. I felt utterly exhausted and drained from the day’s activities and experiences and felt shocked and horrified in a way that I had never experienced before. As I saw the skyline of Kigali disappear in my rear view mirror we turned north towards a hill and started gaining altitude. It was boiling hot and Maggie needed 2nd gear most of the time to drag us up the hill. The revs were high and the engine working as hard as it could for more than 20 minutes when I suddenly saw the temperature gauge rising slightly. I got a great fright, turned the aircon off and let up on the accelerator, keeping the revs below 3 000rpm. Within half a minute the temperature was back to normal and I turned the aircon back on, keeping an eye on the temperature while trying to take in the awesomeness of the landscape around us.

The car was absolutely fine after that and I had to recognise the limitations of the old girl in hot conditions. I stopped next to the road once or twice to take a photograph of the hills and agriculture on insanely steep slopes. I could not help but notice the people more. Their faces, their attitudes, their features. I tried to understand how a nation could move on from the events 16 years before and tried to comprehend how the people I saw then who were clearly old enough to have taken part in either killing, or hiding, could walk around normally and live in apparent harmony. Rwanda, although an incredibly beautiful country did not welcome cameras and those who carried them. Tourism was not something sought after by the people who seemed almost indifferent to our existence. In fact, apart from 12 American tourists we had not seen another Musungu since Grant and Susan had left us three days previous. Even after the police had clearly caught me driving 50km/h in a 40km/h zone on a steep downhill they did not bother to stop me once they saw my face. They seemed uninterested in us. Every time we had stopped next to the road for a rest or something to eat we were mobbed by local youngsters. They were not begging they were just curious. They would stand around ogling us for a while and then just as suddenly as they had appeared, they would loose interest and disappear.

We arrived in Gisenyi shortly before dark and started the task of finding suitable accommodation. The Palm Beach Hotel, as described in our guidebooks was our first choice, only we could not find it. In its place was a new, fancy hotel with a car park stuffed with the newest Land Cruisers displaying UN and world Food insignia. We knew we would not be able to afford it, but enquired none the less. $214 per person per night was their asking price. I left wondering how many families could be fed with the money the driver of that $150 000 Land Cruiser was spending on accommodation. It’s a crazy world!

Our second choice had the potential of being noisier than Masai camp in Arusha, and our third choice was completely out of our budget. They did tell us that the Palm Beach had been demolished five years earlier. (Thanks Lonely Planet for keeping up to date) and recommended the Presbyterian Church’s place down the road. In hindsight, we should have started there.

The fenced compound offered secure parking for Maggie; a double room for $7 a night complete with hot showers and flush toilet and a restaurant on site. It was perfect. Once we settled in it was time for dinner and the buffet was simple. $0.15 for a plate of vegetables, or $0.20 if you included meat. I included so much meat that I was charged for two portions. It was wholesome, tasty, vast quantities of food and I loved the fact that we did not need to wash dishes. Shortly after dinner we went back to the room for some serious relaxing and fell sound asleep under a blue mosquito net. Even though it was Friday night, it was quiet in the town bordering the DRC.

Day 156:

It was our day off! We had been on the move, staying in a different place every night and driving every day for thirteen days. Gisenyi, apart from having the nickname of “The Costa Del Rwanda” where the elite and wealthy had mansions overlooking the lake and the hotels cost $214 per person, didn’t have anything else going for it. Well, apart from the 3470m high Nyiragongo Volcano which blew its top as late as 2002, which I also heard nothing of in South African Media at the time and the fact that the border into the DRC is right on the edge of town that is.

We had the ultimate in Lazy days. I finished reading my book, worked on my computer for a while and Catt tried to find a solution to a Mac start up problem. Before we knew it, it was dinner time again and for the usual fee of less than $1 we stuffed ourselves to the point of bursting. We went to bed early again.

Day 157:

It was my birthday. I refused to get up early as we did not have far too go and insisted on having at least two cups of coffee before moving. It was raining outside. Hardly surprising as were in a rain forest, but still the first rain we had encountered in more than a month. The smell was fantastic! We drove around the beach front for a while, admiring the mansions of the rich and made a u-turn right by the border gate. I wasn’t against the idea of entering the DRC, but the only two reason to do so would have been to trek to the top of the volcano, which we did not have the gear for, or to find some Mountain Gorillas, which we had permits for in Rwanda. Leaving town our journey took us back along the road towards the town of Ruhengeri, often described as the stage post for Gorilla Trekking in Rwanda.

We stopped to buy some tomatoes in a village. Immediately on exiting the car we had a mob of some 30 people around us. Not threateningly, not aggressive, just inquisitive. We strolled across the street to inspect the fruit and paid the asking price of $0.03 (I kid you not) for 10 tomatoes. We also bought two big, ripe avocados for the same price. I had a little giggle at the fact that Catt, in a moment of taste desperation and craving had paid $5 for a single avocado in South Africa less than a year before. We were accompanied by our posse to the doors of Maggie and interested eyes scanned the inside as we climbed in and closed the doors. Smiles and waves greeted us as we drove away. Was this the same place we had learnt about two days earlier?

We bypassed Ruhengeri and headed to the Volcano Nation Park Office; about 14km up the hill and enquired about our procedure for the next day. The friendly and highly professional man at reception explained that we had to report there at 7am the following day and explained what we could expect. The rain had stopped.

We chose the Kinigi guest house for our accommodation for the night for two reasons. The first was that it was within a kilometre of the wildlife office and the second was that their proceeds go to a foundation helping woman in Rwanda. The cost was high for us at $50 a night per double room, but it was after all my birthday!

The rain had started again. We sat in the room reading and chatting and having lunch until late in the afternoon before deciding to abuse the hot showers. Problem was, the water was cold. It wasn’t cold like room temperature, it was cold like melted glacier cold and there was not a snowball’s chance in hell I was going to subject by body to that in the late afternoon, not even thinking about the next morning. I went to reception to complain. We had explicitly asked if the water was hot and the answer had been “yes” and we were paying more for this room than what we had paid for any accommodation in the country, so cold water was unacceptable!

The neat and friendly lady in reception at the time looked at my funny and said: “Parlez-vous Francais?” and took the wind right out of my sails. I tried to explain that the water was cold and we had noisy, leaking tap in the room, but with our apparent language barrier, this was impossible. I returned to our room content at having to wait until another person manned the reception.

A couple of hours later the rain had stopped and the view was dramatic, intense and like something out of a movie! The clouds were omnipresent and concentrated around the tips of no less than 7 volcanic peaks around us. The biggest one, Karisimbi, at 4 507 meters towered above the rest and Sabinyo (3 634m) was clearly visible, marking the confluence of borders between Rwanda, Uganda and the DRC like an ancient sentinel. The air was fresh and clean and my imagination ran wild with visions of great apes in the impenetrable forests behind and above our humble digs. I returned to reception in a better mood and was met by another friendly lady who gave me one look and before I could utter a word announced that she had prepared a different room for us with hot water. I was pleased.

The temperature had dropped significantly and the weather rock reminded me that we were: In the rain forests and on the side of a mountain. This meant that low temperatures and lots of precipitation was in fact the norm and should not have come as a surprise at all. The hot shower on the other hand, was really hot and really welcoming and after thawing out for a while we dressed in our warmest best and ventured to the restaurant in search of dinner. This, according to me was a bit of a drag as I really liked the balance of the food we prepared ourselves and all restaurants in Africa seemed to lack in the fresh vegetable department. I found this very strange as fresh vegetables were not only easy to come by in Rwanda, but also cost next to nothing. Catt on the other hand seemed to relish in the idea of not making our own food. It was not as if she was the one who did the cooking and I was the one doing the “man stuff”. We shared chores equally like the proper “millennium couple” that we were, but I understood that she wanted a break from the simple routine that had become our life and as we had no facilities to prepare our own meals, it was a convenient change for us both.

We met some more Wazungu sheltering next to the fireplace in the lounge next to the restaurant. The conversations were in fast and fluent French, so I only caught snippets of it. I understood that the only other woman was some kind of engineer from France who did her PHD on extracting gasses from the nearby Lake Kivu. The lake, at over 450m deep was not as deep as the 1000m + depths of Lake Tanganyika, which I never knew, and the gasses in question were dissolved in the water after passing through cracks in the earth’s core in the seismic and volcanic regions around Gisenyi where she lived. I did notice an oil rig loo9king structure off shore the previous day, but the purpose of it eluded me.

Her boyfriend was from a Brit who had lived in Switzerland and he was complaining about the price of tennis balls and his club membership mostly. The only other person in the conversation seemed raw French and I understood that he was doing some work in the DRC. He had made the pilgrimage to Rwanda to summit the nearby Bisoke Volcano at 3 711 meters and at a cost of $350 while complaining about the $500 cost of the Gorilla permits. I had two thoughts about that: The Gorilla permits in the DRC were cheaper and the Nyiragongo Volcano where they can be found was as high as Bisoke and cost a fraction of $350 to summit. As I didn’t speak French, I decided not to question.

Dinner for me was a tough piece of what was advertised as Fillet and a mountain of chips with no possibility of tomato sauce. At least it tasted nice with the accompanying mushroom gravy and filled the hole, but man I was craving decent vegetables and I missed our own menu. Catt had a vegetable soup which I failed to find any chunks of vegetables in, but she also reported it was tasty and just what she wanted. I wasn’t convinced. We did however not go to bed hungry and the mammoth bed was soft and comfortable and we knew we could have another hot shower in the early morning before our forest adventures.

Day 158:

The alarm woke us before 6am. We both had an incredible night’s sleep and contributed it to the fact that the room was as dark as a cave. We had not been without light pollution in bed for a while. The shower was steaming hot still and after dressing for our adventure we trotted to the restaurant for our breakfast which was included in our room rate. I was determined to get my money’s worth and was not disappointed! The Coffee was filtered and strong and the omelette (Only thing on the menu) was big and tasty and well prepared. We feasted on some fresh fruit and toast with our second cup of “jo”, handed the key in and drove off to the Parc National Des Volcans, arriving promptly at 7am, as instructed. The weather was fantastic! It was warm and although clouds were around, it did not look like rain was probable at all.

Alfonse, the man at reception remembered our names from the day before, which impressed me. We were also staring at the biggest herd of wazungu we had seen since Zanzibar and a quick calculation made me realize that the park turned over $28 000 for that day in Gorilla and trekking fees. Nice… We were offered more of the fantastic coffee which I gladly accepted and got ushered by a guide to a small group of individuals which made up our party. Mr Eugene, as introduced by himself was our guide and started briefing us on the compulsory 7m distance we had to keep away from the animals and told us that the trackers had already left to find them. He explained that “said trackers” would radio him with a location and he would then tell us how far we had to walk. The two middle aged (I say that carefully as it was the day after my 36th birthday) ladies from Texas seemed eager and excited and told us that it was the first of their two consecutive days of Gorilla trekking. Michael (Mick) the Australian looked as baffled at this as we were, but also said nothing. We had just started his solo trip through Rwanda and Tanzania and planned a Kilimanjaro accent which we gave him some valuable tips for.

With preliminary explanations, introductions and opinions dealt with, we hopped in our vehicles and drove towards our starting point. 40 minutes later we stopped in a village, got out of our vehicles and followed Mr Eugene up the steep hill. Pole-Pole did not seem to exist in Eugene’s vocabulary, but the pace was not too fast. The ladies from Texas got out of breath fast and slowed to group to a comfortable speed. We strolled through villages and fields of potato and maize and I could not believe that these locals managed to cultivate the slopes. It was however, evident that the soil was incredibly fertile, judging from the size of the plants and the fruits that hung on them. Water was obviously no problem as it seemed to rain on a daily basis, even though this was the dry season.

We reached the National Park Boundary before long and our group grew somewhat. The Texas pair had employed a couple of local porters to carry their handbag sized rucksacks. We also acquired two men in camouflage uniforms, packing a radio and an AK47 each. One was tall, obviously Tutsi and other short, perhaps Hutu. No one seemed to care any longer. Mr Eugene explained that they were military and there to protect us… from charging Buffalo and elephant he added and explained that they had the right to shoot them. He also told us about poaching problem which had seemingly been eradicated since the trackers looked after the Gorillas. I wanted to ask if the military was allowed to shoot them as well, like they did in Botswana some years before, but though it might be in bad taste.

So there we were, four Wazungu, two porters with machetes and two unformed soldiers with AK47’s being led by a guide who calls himself “Mr Eugene” into the forests of deep, dark Africa. Not that my South African upbringing and general paranoia about personal safety on the continent sent alarm bells ringing louder than the 16th Chapel’s clock tower…

The forest engulfed us and was absolutely surreal. We had to almost crawl through bamboo tunnels and when we walked upright the undergrowth was three times higher than the tall soldier. The path was narrow and understandably muddy and the sounds of the forest were loud, as if amplified through the ancient and massive trees around us. Apart from our narrow and muddy path, the place seemed unspoilt and untouched and I could not help but wonder how long it could be kept like that. I hoped that the $500 per person permits would ensure its indefinite survival.

Within an hour I heard voices ahead of us and shortly after we found the trackers. They had found the Ugenda group of Mountain Gorillas. You could visibly see the excitement erupt on all our faces. As instructed, we piled our bags by the trackers and armed with cameras, spare cameras, spare batteries, spare memory cards and our Mr. Eugene, we ventured further into the thick undergrowth. Within two minutes we saw our first Gorilla. He was smaller than I had envisaged, but by no means less impressive. The group seemed calm and relaxed and evidently unperturbed by our presence. The one tracker who accompanied us made reassuring noises which seemed to have the desired effect. We slowly followed a few individuals, snapping away with no less than 5 cameras as we went. They were foraging and eating and going about their normal daily routine and Eugene explained that they were about to make a nest and bed down for a while. I counted 15 individuals of which one massive Silverback was the obvious leader. He seemed the least interested in us and the most interested in napping. There were two females with tiny offspring who had a hard time keeping control of them and some adolescents climbing trees and being generally none submissive to the authority of the big man. The 7m rule suddenly went straight out the window and Mr Eugene explained that the theory was sound, but no one had managed to explain it to the curious Gorillas. We were less than two meters away from the group. It was not my first encounter with the species, (I had seen a few Gorillas in a zoo before) but I was still absolutely astonished by their similarities to our own. Their facial expressions could be read as human expressions could and their behaviour was scaringly close to ours.

Even before Mr Eugene said it, I could see the Silverback getting agitated and grumpy, so we let them be and was taken to a younger male, a Black Back, about thirty meters away. He was sitting up and eating and acting as lookout. He seemed in the prime of his life and much bigger than the others. He regarded us with some dismay and ignored us shortly after. We headed back to the main group.

As we stood, meters away, snapping away and being amazed all the time, the tracker said something and we were forced to part, urgently. We all looked back from where we came from to see another male approaching us. We displayed no fear or curiosity or even aggression towards us. He was simply on his way to the group and we were in his way. He literally pushed the group apart and strolled right through us, brushing my one leg with his powerful arm as we went by. He joined the group, everything became calm once more and we were allowed to resume our activities after an approving snort from the silverback.

Every group on the mountain was only allowed to be visited by a maximum of 8 people for one hour every day. Our hour passed incredibly fast and before we were anywhere near ready to leave, Mr Eugene announced bingo, and led us away from the group. We found the place we had left our bags and the verbal diarrhoea started immediately! It was not as if we were not allowed to speak when we were with the Gorillas, but everyone was rendered speechless by the sheer amazement of the experience of being in the company of the incredible species. We all suddenly understood how Dianne Fosse could live with them for so long in apparent solitude and how easy it would be to immerse yourself into their environment and even get accepted by the group as one of the clan. We could not however understand how poachers could come there, kill adult females and steal the babies to be sold on the black market. I formed the sudden opinion that not only the poachers, but also the buyers who created the market should really be hunted down and shot… I did not share that view with the group.

The walk back down the mountain was pretty easy going and we chatted all the way. Our armed escort abandoned us at the park border and we were greeted and ogled at all the way through the villages and fields until we reached the mob that was looking after our vehicles. I estimated fifty curious people gathered around the two parked cars and suddenly felt like a Mountain Gorilla myself. Apart from the fact that I had not shaved in about a week, our white skins and fair hair and funny faces and bags became the show of the day and genuinely interested eyes followed our every move until we started our engines and drove away.

Back at the office we received certificates and congratulations for joining a small select group of humans who had had the absolute privilege and honour to visit the Gorillas in the wild. There was no mention, or asking for tips or more payment or favours or anything else. The whole experience was refreshingly well presented and professionally conducted and was better than I hoped it would be. The rest of the Africa we had experienced that far could learn so much from those involved!

It was before mid day and I did not really feel like paying another $50 for one night’s accommodation, so suggested that we hit the road and cross the border into Uganda. The rain had started again. Just before the border I changed the last of our Rwanda Francs to Uganda Shillings, convinced that I was getting ripped off by a bad exchange rate. Back in the car I worked out that this was indeed the case, but it wasn’t much money, so I didn’t care too much.

We reached the tiny border post at Cyuve, close to Kisoro shortly after and started dealing with the formalities. Immigration took all of two minutes; the Carnet was filled in and stamped in another three minutes and within ten minutes of arriving we left Rwanda. The Uganda side took longer… The Immigration official was on his cell phone when we reached his counter, so that took five minutes. He also had to issue our $50 per person visas and write a receipt, to be fair. Customs took another five minutes and charged us USH 45 000 for road and carbon tax, or something and stamped the Carnet. We drove through an open boom gate, returning to the driving on the left (The actual right side to drive on according to us both) within half an hour of arriving at the border. We deemed that our easiest border crossing to date.

On the Uganda side we found a dirt track instead of a road. We reached the town of Kisoro after a while. This was the base in Uganda for seeing the Gorillas but held no interest to us. We decided to continue to Lake Bunyonyi and the Bunyonyi Overland Resort, described in the guide books as a fantastic place to hang out. The road took us through mountain passes and road works and the persistent rain turned the gravel tracks into slippery muddy skidpans. That was supposed to be the dry season and I could not imagine what the roads would have been like in the actual rainy season. The sharp corners and bends offered magnificent view of the volcanoes we had left behind and the intensity of the agriculture on the steep slopes, covering every inch of mountain side as well as the peaks was just astonishing to see.

The 60km of muddy, slippery mountain passes took us over three hours to travel and I was, once again reminded that distance had absolutely no bearing on travel time in Africa. We were not so inexperienced that we got caught out by this though and still arrived at the lakeside resort a couple of hours before dark. I was immediately impressed by what I saw. The Bunyonyi Overland Resort covered an area of about three hectares and occupied a quiet and recessed bay in the lake. It catered for every level of accommodation. They had double rooms, safari tents and a camp site. The latter was occupied by an overland truck, but we were allowed to park Maggie on a perfectly level terrace about a hundred meters away, overlooking the bay in which the resort was. The price was $12 per night for the two of us and they bragged about hot showers and flush toilets. We were sold and sign up for two nights. The rain had stopped as well so we pitched camp with great efficiency and as I reached for the coal Catt announced her none debatable desire to eat in the restaurant…. Again.

To be fair, this restaurant was extremely well prices and the bar was also cheap. We shared a buffet dinner with the overlanders and drank a few G&T’s for less than $20 and went to bed happy in the decision to stay more than one night.

Day 159:

I had been a little apprehensive to sharing camp sites with overland trucks. This was due to stories I had heard and read about the “great unwashed” and the “noisies”. In our experience, these names were unfounded to say the least. The group of overlanders in this camp had a party in the bar, as groups of people would be expected to have, but there was never excessive noise or unruly behaviour. To be honest, through the night I did not really notice them at all and the early morning was fantastically quiet. In fact, it was so quiet that we only got up after 9am. We had decided to have a little holiday…

The fantastic-ness of Africa presented itself in the form of a neat and friendly young man enquiring if we had any washing that needed done. We counted it up and asked him to quote a price for our humungous pile. He informed us of the individual prices, did mental arithmetic faster than we could and as we arrived at less than $10. There was enough washing to keep a standard washing machine occupied for at least four loads, so we did not argue the price and watched in amazement as he disappeared with the mountain of cloth.

By the time we had finished our second cup of coffee he was back. The washing was wet still, but the white top Catt had given up on came back pristinely clean, as did the rest of the clothes, and bed sheets, and towels. We constructed extra washing lines from tow straps and hung everything out to dry after handing over the required payment and something extra as a tip.

After lunch we walked into the village in search of fresh produce. We acquired a kilogram of tomatoes and the same weight in carrots and bananas for… well… $0.25 total. The fruit was fantastically big and looked and felt phenomenally healthy! We were obviously still surrounded by very fertile soil and no shortage of water. We asked about potatoes, but our local, trusty grocer had none. We walked down to the waterfront and found some empty stalls, but not a single potato in sight. We asked some people who promised to have some the next day and we agreed to return. On the walk back to the resort a man ran after us and while out of breath explained that he had heard about our desire to find potatoes. He informed us that he could facilitate this, so we followed him into the village. We bought about a kilogram’s worth for about $0.07 which completed our shopping list for the day. On the five minute walk back to the resort gate we were approached by no less than four more people asking if we still needed potatoes. It was dumbstruck! The bush telegraph had worked hard it seemed and we did indeed have a whole village looking for potatoes for us.

We reached Maggie just in time for the first rain cloud to pour its contents over our patch of earth. We did manage to save the washing from getting an extra rinse from Mother Nature, but was all too aware that we were still close to rain forests, and more importantly, close to the Equator. We expected that it would rain every day for a while. The electricity was off for the day. We suspected the government’s involvement in this, but were assured that it would come on around 18:00. In anticipation to this we moved back to the restaurant and plugged in the laptop to get charged.

Minutes before I wanted to go back to our camp, make a fire and cook th3 juicy pork chops and fresh vegetables I had been looking so forward to… and drink the fine red Californian wine we acquired in Rwanda… the heavens opened! It didn’t just rain. The millions and millions of gallons of water came down in bucket loads and sheets so thick you could not see more than ten meters. We simply had to wait for the storm to pass us by before even contemplating braving the 100m walk back to Maggie.

After two hours the rain showed no signs of subsiding and with a smile Catt said: “Should we order some food then?” I had no argument, so once again we ate in the restaurant. Don’t get me wrong, the food was fantastic and as we ordered off the menu and did not eat from the buffet, our meal and healthy amount of G&T came to a total of $15. It was a bargain, but I was still craving our own cooking!

We spent a few hours chatting to some more overlanders as two more trucks had rolled up during the afternoon. We were both astonished to discover the diversity of people on the same tours we were approached by for a chat. At a guess I would say that the age range was 18 to 55 and the nationalities went from as far as New Zealand and Australia to Canada, England and even Norway. True to form, the Aussies were drunk, the Brits were flirting and the Norwegians were chatting up the young girls, but everyone, including the drivers and guides seemed to be having fun despite the raging storm outside.

The storm did stop eventually and around 23:00 we left a comfortable bon fire to investigate the state of our tent and bedding inside it. To my pleasant surprise, everything inside our tent was bone dry, despite the dripping wetness of the outside. We crawled into our comfortable home and fell sound asleep, happy with the world and the state it was in around the part of it we found ourselves in.

Day 160:

On a whim we had decided to stay at our comfortable lakeside resort for another day. Once again we shamelessly slept until after 9am and when we got up the electricity was still on. This meant that the showers were steaming hot, which we took advantage of straight away.

The Overland Trucks had left around 7am, but so quietly that I only heard the engines start and drive off. The place was dead quiet and we loved it. The staff that walked by greeted us as friends and stopped for a general chat every once in a while. We were offered a ride in a dugout canoe on the lake, which we declined and general laziness dictated that we do as little as possible… at a slow pace.

The morning was spent reading, writing and generally having a chilled out time. We managed to get all our washing dry and packed away before the clouds came. Catt baked some fantastic bread which made for a more fantastic lunch than I can possibly explain, but I’ll try. The bread had carrot, onion, cabbage and peas mixed into white flower and were still hot when we melted butter on it and draped healthy chunks of Rwandan cheese on top, which also melted. We ate twice as much as what was normal and loved every single bite!

After lunch we started weather proofing our camp for the afternoon rains. The Eezi-Awning was still up from the day before, but I constructed a side with our ground sheet and we prepared as much of dinner as we could, committing to cooking it ourselves! Obviously, as we were so well prepared, the rain never came. It threatened all the time, but never actually followed through. This meant that we had our fantastic dinner out in the open, drank some wine, played some cards and went to bed happy…

Day 161:

I woke up some time in the middle of the night to three sounds: The first was the lively bar, courtesy of the fresh load of overlanders. It was far away and not really disturbing. The second was of the local dog that found our trash bag and I suspected that was the sound that actually woke me. The third was the approaching storm. I confiscated the trash bag from the very friendly pooch and managed to get back into the tent before the heavens opened once again. Welcome to Uganda, I though… A friendly, much underrated and very wet place on the continent.

After sunrise I waited for the alarm to go off before getting up only to learn that no alarm was set. We managed to get up at a very respectable 8:30Am and as the electricity was, by some miracle, still on, we once again helped ourselves to a steaming hot shower before hitting the road once again.

Our first stop was the town of Kabale for some cash and supplies. Cash was easily obtainable from the Barkley’s ATM despite what the guidebooks lead us to believe. We saw a sign for a Royal Supermarket and went inside to investigate. Pot Luck! The friendly owner advised us on the best cheese at a reasonable price ($0.40 per KG) and stocked our newly discovered favourite Californian Red for less than South African prices. That was a first for the trip. He even offered us a fantastic exchange rate and we obtained a whack of US$ to replenish that store. We left smiling and went to fill the fuel tanks. Fuel in Uganda was cheaper than Tanzania and Rwanda… In fact, it was the cheapest fuel we had seen since Zimbabwe, so not even filling the tanks to the brim hurt the wallet as much as expected. I left town liking Uganda more than I ever expected I would.

The last things on the shopping list were vegetables. Experience had taught us that they are best purchased from markets and the first market we spotted next to the road offered fantastically healthy looking specimens. We got swamped by locals when we emerged from the car, but after I explained that we would walk through the whole market before making a single purchase, they all backed off and gave us some space. Eventually we bought a head of cauliflower, a whole cabbage, 5 onions, 6 green peppers, a bunch of spinach and 10 massive bananas for just under $4 and once again left happy.

Our destination for the day was a rumoured camp site called Hippo Hills, right next to the Queen Elisabeth National Park. The winding roads and tracks lead us through mountain passes and villages and banana plantations and the odd tea estate or two. Every village had an unbelievable tonnage of bananas on display and every mountain pass an unbelievable amount of mud! We passed through one fairly hefty rain storm without incident and eventually started driving down a short escarpment road towards the park. With every hour that passed, I seemed to grow more and more fond of Uganda and almost started feeling as if the country provided a break from the Africa we had been accustomed to. The kids still asked for money and the market traders still charged skin tax, but when you said a friendly “no thanks”, they simply backed off. It was marvellous!

We turned off the tar road towards the park gate just after 15:00 and were immediately told about a Leopard next to the road by a safari guide. The clouds were ominous and heavy and before we could find the cat, the rain had started again. We did manage to see a nice big herd of Elephants who were friendly and relaxed and a herd of Buffalo who were simply curious. The rain got heavier and heavier and at some point I could not see as much as the front of the bonnet. I had to stop for a few minutes and when it became lighter, continue our journey. We stopped briefly at the park’s entrance gate to enquire about prices before driving on and finding the unadvertised and seemingly unknown Hippo Hills Camp site. I was pleasantly surprised! It radiated community project, but had a nice big bar and lounge area, some permanent tents and a camp site with facilities. An apparent rarity in that part of the world. The rate was $5 per person, so we looked no further for our evenings resting place.

The camp site had a “cooking Banda” the size of a double garage complete with electric lights which provided a handy shelter from the inevitable rain. We spent most of the evening inside with a California Merlot, cooking up an award winning Risotto before retiring to the roof top comforts of our tent.

If I had to do it all again:

The only mistake I think we made was not finding a place to stay in Kigali for a second night after the disastrous One Love experience. If we did that, we could have obtained our Gorilla permits that afternoon, did the Genocide tour the next day and drove a circular route, including the Nyungwe National park and the lake road from Kibuye to Gisenyi. We did see a large part of Rwanda none the less, so it wasn’t all bad.

The rest of the week was pleasant and relaxing, offering no less than two “life changing” experiences.