Woke up today and Maggie and I went to a place called the “Blues Café” for breakfast. Then Maggie went looking for coats (we would need them at the summit of Bisoke volcano) and I went to an internet café and did some work for NYU.
We met back up at 1:00 and went to the tourism office to pay for our Bisoke trek - $150 – not too bad.
Maggie and I apparently weren’t thinking too clearly because we bought the trekking tickets before knowing if there was room at the Kiniji Guest House – the only reasonably priced lodge in the town (it cost $20 and the other lodges that catered to extravagantly rich people charged about $400 / night). The lady gave us the number for the lodge but it didn’t work. I called from my cell phone and my global cell phone and it didn’t work either time.
“Are you sure this is the right number?” I asked Peace.
She nodded.
Maggie and I decided we’d just go to Kiniji and hope they had room. The lady told us where to get buses to Kiniji and we left.
On the way to the bus depot we bought a Rwandan SIM card and airtime and called the lodge. They were completely booked. Our spirits sank.
“Can you refer us to another lodge?” Maggie asked.
They told her to call back in a half hour. Great.
We got VERY lost looking for the bus company, “Belvedere Bus.” It took us about an hour to find it. It was very frustrating everywhere we went people harassed us and tried to get us to take their bus – but we only trusted Belvedere because the woman at the tourism office was adamant we take them.
Finally we got to Belvedere at 2:23. The bus left at 2:30…good timing.
The bus wound through the verdant hills that were layered and tiered with farming trenches. Seperately the tiers were pragmatic means of creating farmable land – in aggregate they were a stunningly beautiful agricultural mosaic stretching as far as the eye could see. As we wound higher into the Rwandan mountains the mist of the mountains, clouds of the sky and haze of the distance morphed into one.
Our ears popped as we rose higher still. We stopped at a roadside mart along the way. Maggie got a ham and cheese sandwich.
She bit into it. “Mmm, its delicious. Have half.”
“No, its not that big and you are really enjoying it.”
She smiled. “It’s delicious and that’s why I want to share it with you.”
Aww isn’t she nice!?
The sandwich was good, but three months ago it would have made me ill. My stomach is pretty Africanized by now – I can eat basically anything and not get sick (knock on wood). It’s been almost 2 months since I’ve had stomach issues. Not bad (although I go through about a pound of Purell every day (that’s the trick I think)).
After 2 hours we arrived in Musenze. I thought Musenze was within walking distance of Kiniji. I walked to the bus driver, I pointed at my ticket and then down at the ground (basically asking if we were at the destination I was supposed to be at). He nodded.
Maggie persisted.
I walked over. “Maggie, we know we’re in the right town why are you still talking to the bus driver?”
“We need to take another bus to Kiniji.”
Oh. I didn’t know that.
There was a crowd gathered around us. Masenze was the real sticks. A woman wheeled over a crippled child in a wheelchair. The child supplicated softly, “Please give me money.”
I couldn’t in that situation. I walked away, but it was sad.
Again a group of people all working for different bus companies harassed Maggie and I. We finally found one going to Kiniji and bought tickets which cost 300 Francs (60 cents).
While we waited for the bus to leave we watched a young boy with a leg amputated at the hip running around on his hands and his one good leg. The boy was disturbingly dexterous and his body movement reminded me of something out of a poltergeist movie or something.
A child came to Maggie’s window selling an odd fruit that was ensconced in what appeared to be a flower bud.
“What is it?” Maggie asked.
The children, and nobody on the bus spoke a lick of English.
Finally a woman in front of us reached out the window, grabbed one of the buds, opened the leaves and popped a gumball-sized fruit in her mouth. Ahh, it was food.
Maggie bought it and we ate the strange fruit. It tasted like an orange-flavored strawberry and had the consitency and texture of a tomatoe. Delicious.
“Savor the flavor.” Maggie said. “You’ll never see this fruit again.”
How right she was – I cant even count the number of times I came across bizarre fruits on my travels that I’ve never seen again.
After a 30 minute trip we got to where we surmised was Kiniji. I turned to the man sitting next to me, wearing a suit and asked him if he knew where Kiniji Guesthouse was.
He smiled, a wide, toothy smile. “Yes, I will take you there.”
Hmm – okay – that works!
We made small talk as we walked. His name was Samuel and he was a preacher at a 7th Day Adventist Church in Masenze but lived in Kiniji.
As we walked we were inundated with children SCREAMING “Mzungu! Mzungu! MZUNGU!” I have to admit – in all my travels I’ve never seen kids get THAT excited. We were definitely not a common site in that town. There were less while people in Masenze and Kiniji than just about anywhere I’d been before. They kept demanding I take pictures of them and then show them the pictures. Cute.
Samuel led us off the main road and onto a dirt path that snaked between a thin forest of trees on either side. Maggie and I started getting nervous.
“You’re taking us to the Kiniji Guesthouse – right Samuel?”
He smiled and nodded. “Yes, this way.” He pointed at another shock of trees in the distance. “Just behind those trees.”
It was odd, but I think I have a good sense for people and I felt Samuel was a good guy. Plus he was dressed in a full suit and was a preacher…I mean if he was a robber it was an elaborate hoax.
Much to my surprise Samuel took us directly to the lodge (he took us a back way through the forest). Along the way we met his daughter.
Three boys – George, Claude and Fred started walking with me. We talked about their favorite English Premier League Team (Arsenal) and about their soccer team. When I got to the lodge they asked me to take their picture and email it to their school (I did).
When we checked in we met two Swiss guys, Flohan and Xavier that had tracked gorillas earlier in the day but were also climbing Bisoke the next day (same as us). They kindly offered to drive us from the campsite to the base of the mountain. They were nice guys so Maggie and I had dinner with them and Aaron – a guy from Quebec that was going to Medical School in Australia and doing an internship in a Rwandan hospital. Good conversation, good people – but the worst food I’ve had yet in Africa. All they had was fried fish and I literally couldn’t put the thing in my mouth. It was rancid. I ate a mini-banana and French fries. Yum.
We had a long day of travelling and sleep came quickly.
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