With bus to Kigali
Trip Start
Nov 12, 2007
1
6
13
Trip End
Dec 17, 2007
OK, we came to red chili late in the evening, and we were tired after the previous night so we decided to stay at home that night and relax. We met up with Sebastian who we meet at the other red chili camp, and made planes for getting tickets to go to Kigali the next evening. The next morning we packed our stuff and headed towards Kampala centre. We found the place the bus company was supposed to be, but off course it had moved.... After trying to get some moped boys to help us we gave up, as they would only drive us there, not show us were it was. We found it after en hour and booked the VIP bus to Kigali, Rwanda. After that Bryce and I tried to take out American dollars from an ATM which was impossible, and we had to go to an exchange bureau. We walked around the busy Kampala for some hours before we went back to red chili to get our backpacks. Around ten we went down town again to attend some kind of reggae concert, where the highlight was that I ate grasshoppers, and not the music. We walked the 2-3 km to the bus place and sat forth towards Rwanda. On the bus there were crowded as everywhere else, and the radio was on full strength. And it was not pleasant calm music, but some kind of screaming, and the radio host kept on saying AZIBO really loud the whole time. It sounded so scary, but everyone else seemed to enjoy it, and after a while we got used to it as well, but Bryce came with a confession: namely that he is a bit scared of loud Swahili radio shows ;) The driver drove as he had stolen both the bus and the gas, so I was pretty sure we were going to drive off he road, but they are remarkably good drivers. One thing is that that they never say anything in English, so when Bryce was on his way out to take a leak as we stopped, someone screamed 'musungo, musungo, we leave NOW' and he barely made in before we headed of again. Musungo means white person, but it has some negative connotations, and people call us that all the time, which is sometimes a big annoying, but mostly ok. The roads were ok, but there were some shaking which woke us up once in a while. When we came to the boarder, Bryce and I were the last ones to check out of Uganda, and all of a sudden we found our self alone in the morning mist, cold and uncertain what to do. After a minute we found out where to go and we headed to get a visa. After waiting half an hour I got my visa, and we could leave. As we entered Rwanda we noticed right away how different it was from Uganda. Rwanda has ten million people and the country is only one twentieth of France, so they live pretty close to each other. This had made it necessary for them to cultivate every possible square of the land, and the hills are filled with crops and bananas (among other things). Massive tea fields and friendly people waving to us was what meet us in Rwanda. We arrived at the taxi central in Kigali around noon, and we could not figure out where we were (because we were not yet on the map). Determined not to get screwed over (we thought it was about 500 meters) we decided to walk! After a 2 km uphill walk in 30-35 degrees we realized that they had given up a very good deal, but we were too paranoid to take it. Sebastian left us straight away, and Bryce and I got a nice hotel room in the city centre.
