4 muzungus and a land rover!

Finally, this weekend we planned an escape from Kigali; drive to Goma in DRC in our friend’s land rover. On Friday night we met up at another friend’s house to have some drinks and just hang out – turns out the land rover was in the garage due to some problem with the transmission; it was due back at some point on Saturday early afternoon. This ended up not being a problem seeing as we stayed up drinking and laughing until way too late so the lie in was more than welcome. By about 1pm the boys turned up to pick us up. Our guard stayed and waited with us outside the gate and once the boys arrived he watched through the little window in the gate to make sure we were ok – he’s very protective; to the point where his nosiness annoys me a little – but there we go; nothing goes unnoticed here ;-))

We hit the road and missed it on the first go; i.e. we missed the turn off point and drove in the wrong direction for about half an hour – never mind – we turned round got the right turning and drove on up through the hills. The roads wind through the mountains, up and down all the way through lush trees contrasted by the typical red earth. What’s amazing is that there are people everywhere – you can’t drive without seeing houses and settlements and people everywhere. Every inch of the surface of this country is in use – fields all the way up to the tip of the mountains; fields so steep it makes you wonder how the people cultivate them without falling off the mountain. Everything is neatly organised; little squares that mark the landscape.

After a while we stopped for some drinks and a break from the driving. The place was a little bar on a crossroads – it was extremely cheap compared to Kigali. After a quick visit of the latrines – oh what smell! – we were off on the road again – again winding our way through the hills and villages; Rwanda is indeed the land of the thousand hills – there are no words to describe the beauty of driving along the crest of a hill and seeing the seemingly endless rolling hills on either side all the way into the horizon, with the most incredible cloud formations hanging over them – it’s magical!

Although it’s only just over 150 km it took us a good 3 hours to drive to Gisenyi and we arrived there just after sunset. We did not know where the border into DRC was, so we had to ask people; however, as soon as you leave Kigali people don’t speak much French and/or English – but we just rolled the window down, pointed down the road and went ‘Congo?’ – in return we got a grunt and a raising of the eyebrows – in Rwanda that means ‘yes’. So we carried on along the dirt road until we hit the border post. We were told that normally the border closed at six – it was six thirty – but that we could still get across if we left the car in Rwanda and would pick it up the next day. Fine – we would do that; we weren’t going to drive anywhere that night anymore anyway.