Truck Journey to Musanze, Rwanda

The combination of getting up so early for four days in a row, the exhausting gorilla trek the previous day, and that it had been raining on the tent when I went to sleep and still raining on the tent when I woke up, meant that my mood and morale was low. I got up at 6am but then discovered the truck was leaving later at 9am because of the rain. I had some breakfast of oats and toast with honey, put my possessions in the truck storage under my seat, and packed up my soaking wet tent. We set off for our next destination, Musanze, Rwanda.The journey has some of the most spectacular scenery I’ve ever seen with vast vistas of mountains and hills covered with steep small fields and trees. One of the views in particular was an immense vista of hills and mountains stretching for mile after mile. The valleys were often filled with large lakes such as the long Lake Boryani which we finally left behind after about an hour's drive. The people and especially the children still waved on route, but nearer the Rwandan border the mischievous children were noticeably more aggressive in asking for money/pens and some threw sticks at the truck or tried to jump on the back if they didn’t get what they wanted. We crossed the Rwanda border without too much difficulty. The first thing to notice was that we were now in a French speaking country and were driving on the right hand side of the road. The people and culture were already noticeably different. The houses were generally more wealthy and the roads were lined with trees. The people’s waves and acknowledgements were also more friendly than the last part of Uganda. We arrived at our next place, Fatima camp, which is an old convent complex of buildings in Musanze under the shadow of a huge volcano, Karisimbi, that had been dominating the skyline of our jouney for over half an hour. We were all given twin en suite rooms rather than the dorm rooms we were expecting which was an unexpected and welcome luxury after our miserable wet camp the night before. However, I was exhausted and had been given the task and responsibility of cooking for the rest of the group along with two others – Jesse and Kristin. This made me miserable as I had cooked only two days before and just wanted to rest and sleep after an exhausting few days. Very kindly, my fellow traveller Brian, a gentle and kind Irishman with a good wit and a stutter, and who I was sharing the same twin room with, very kindly offered to take my place on the cooking group. After some initial reluctance to impose on Brian, I gratefully agreed and was able to clean my muddy waterproofs and boots from the previous day’s mudfest of a gorilla trek and was able to get a couple of hours of desperately needed rest on a comfy bed. In the evening I discovered that part of the reason for my tiredness was that I’d contracted a mild stomach virus. I did sleep well and felt a little more rested and refreshed the following morning.Read more