December 4th, 2023
Even though I only had about 120 kilometres to travel from
Lake Bunyonyi to Ruhengeri in Rwanda, I was fairly certain that it was going to
be an all-day affair…and I wasn’t too far off.
There would be 7 legs of transportation phase: a boat off Itambira Island, a boda boda
(motorcycle taxi) to Kabale, a car taxi to Kisoro, a boda boda to the border,
walking across the border, a bus from the border to Ruhengeri and finally a
boda boda to my chosen accommodation!
Whew.
I hopped on the small boat at 9 am, and this is when I found
out from the kind captain that he had been waiting for me to arrive three days
earlier at the Seeds of Hope parking lot.
If only they would have told me via a Booking.com message. The boda boda driver was with us in the boat
and we definitely took an easier route back to Kabale than the one the Brian
and I did to get to Lake Bunyonyi. It
was still an unpaved and at times rough road, but it was quicker.
The motorcyclist took me to the spot where the buses stopped
but I found out that a bus to Kisoro wouldn’t leave for another three hours so
the guy suggested that I take a taxi.
Ugh, as previously mentioned, humans get packed like sardines in those
things. I decided that I would offer the
driver to pay for two seats, so instead of 4 people in the middle row of seats,
it would only be 3. He agreed to that
but in the end, there were 5 of us in that row…but it was a mom, her 3 year-old,
2 year-old and 9 month-old baby (yup, she’s been busy!).
So it was as the comfiest taxi ride as I’ve had in Uganda,
although it wasn’t entirely smooth sailing.
Thanks to the curvy road, the 3 year-old threw up a few times, although
it seemed to be mostly clear liquid.
Luckily the 2 year-old was the one closest to me. I felt sorry for the oldest child as she
looked pretty miserable, but didn’t cry about the situation. We stopped about 20 minutes later for the sick
one to have a “short call” (pee) beside the road and then mom was in the middle
of the kids. Then mother like daughter, the
woman started to puke. Again, it was
mostly clear liquid. Perhaps they didn’t
eat any breakfast knowing that this would happen. Mom prepared a plastic bag for any more
vomit, but thankfully it wasn’t necessary.
Arriving in Kisoro, as usual boda boda drivers approached me,
desperate for some business. First, I went
to an Airtel shop as I had been unable to activate my eSim that I wanted to
have active before crossing the border.
The guy in the store was nice enough to let me connect to their Wi-Fi
and I was able to get it working.
Okay, time for the next leg of the journey, a motorcycle
taxi to the border. Crossing the border
by foot only took about 25 minutes. I
first had to talk to a plain clothed security or police officer. He looked up my passport on his laptop,
perhaps for any problems or outstanding warrants, and then I was told to
continue on. My bag was briefly searched
by a security guard. I thought he would
be more thorough as you are not allowed to bring any plastic bags into Rwanda
as they have a strict law against one time use plastic bags. Next was emigration to get my exit stamp from
Uganda followed immigration to get my entrance stamp to Rwanda. The whole process was painless.
Hello Rwanda.
Now in Rwanda for my first time, I noticed a lack of
motorcycle taxis. I lucked out as there
was a small bus about to head towards Ruhengeri, which I found out is now named
Musanze. I paid 3000 Rwandan Francs
($3.25 CAD – which I found out was expensive for the 15 kilometer ride…mzungu
price!) and within a few minutes we started towards the small city.
The bus was packed, and we stopped many times with people
hopping on an off. There was a seat that
flipped into the aisle with a seatback that flipped up. This meant that when someone who was in the
back of the bus wanted to get off, there was a whole lot of shuffling around by
people so the aisle could be used as an aisle again. Some people also had large white sacks in
tow. There was a 50-pound flour bag near
my seat and a massive sack whose contents was a mystery. It was lying lengthwise down the aisle
towards the front of the bus and during the journey, passengers had either
walked over it or sat down on it. This
had caused the contents to flatten out and it took about 4-5 minutes before two
men finally were able to wrestle it up and out of the bus…kinda funny to watch.
This is Mount Karimsimbi, 4507 meters in height:
Now in Musanze, my first order of business was to get some
local currency: Rwandan Francs. I only
had 17,000 francs ($15) that I had exchanged with Anna at Lake Bunyonyi the
night before as she needed some Ugandan shillings for her journey back to
Rwanda. A young man in his early 20s
named John came up to me and asked me how I was and what my name was. He claimed that he liked to practice his
English with foreigners as he hoped to be in the tourism industry in the
future. He walked with me as I went to
the first ATM I had seen just before exiting the bus. Unfortunately, it wasn’t in service. I asked the security guard where there was
another one…went there, it had no money.
Now John helped and led me to ATM after ATM…none of them seemed to have
money. Finally, ATM number 6 was a
success. Crazy. It is a bit strange that the biggest
denomination is the 5000 franc note ($5.40).
No wonder the machines run out of cash, they need to hold a ton of those
notes to stay active as I had just taken out 400,000 francs (80 bills in
total).
John told me that his 48 year-old mom was recovering from
Malaria in the hospital and that he walked a few hours each day to see
her. It was tough to tell whether this
was the truth or part of a story to gain my sympathy. He asked if I was interested in seeing where
he was studying, but it had been a long day and I could see rain coming. I just wanted to get to my accommodation and
didn’t want to get stuck in the rain on a motorcycle taxi. John seemed to understand and got me a
taxi. He asked for a little help
financially and I had already pulled out a bit of money to give to him as I
appreciated his assistance in finding a functional ATM.
My new friend John:
Once I was settled in, I walked over to the sheltered
restaurant/chill out area and tried to catch up on some blogging and planning
of activities. There was one young woman
on a video chat and otherwise it was quiet.
Later, three other foreigners were sitting around a table. I overheard one of them invite the woman to
join them. I received the same invite an
hour or two later and I decided to stop being anti-social. Well, I was happy to have made that
decision. The three guys hailed from
South Africa. Two of them, Stefan and
Beyers worked offshore. Stefan is a commercial
diver whose deepest dive was 150 meters!
The third guy, also a Stefan, works online in user experience
planning/programming (I probably don’t have that exactly right). I will call the first Stefan “Koster” (his
last name) to avoid confusion. The young
woman was a German named Julie (pronounced “Yul-uh”).
My room was at the back of this building:
The restaurant/chill out area at Red Rocks Rwanda:
The beers started flowing as we enjoyed a late dinner together. The chefs named Kostin and Joseph made some pretty good food over the next few days of my stay. After many laughs, I decided to call it a night close to midnight. Julie lasted maybe another hour, but the South Africans rocked on until 4 am. Koster never ended up going to bed. Instead, he wandered towards the city, some 7 kilometres away. At one point a bicycle taxi picked him up and they took turns pedalling their way up the long hill to town. I guess he eventually found a restaurant that was open, had a great breakfast and made some new friends with the locals. What an animal!
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