The last two weeks have been a chance for me to venture out in to the great outdoors in parts of Eastern Africa!! On the last weekend of April, I and a few other Peace Corps volunteers came to visit me at my site and on the next day in the morning we took on Mount Kabuye, the second highest mountain range in Rwanda.
The rainy season in this part of the world starts usually in early April and lasts through June. However, the seasons seem to be shifted and the weather’s been great all of April with lots of sun and short spurts of heavy rain that would last no more than an hour!! However, the Friday when my friends were expected to arrive, it had started raining very early in the day and didn’t stop raining until the evening!! Saturday morning, the day we were to go hiking I could hear the soothing sound of muffled rain drops falling on my tin roof throughout the night. We were up by 7:30 in the morning and it was still raining on and off! We fixed a small breakfast, bread and butter, peanut butter sandwiches and herbal tea!! We decided to wait out the rain. Tom, one of the PCVs suggested we wait until 9:30 and if it hadn’t stopped raining by then we would just go. By 9:20 the rain had stopped but the skies were still full of clouds!! We strapped our boots, put on our rain coats and headed out!!
The path to Kabuye is literally right outside my house. We walked down the dirt road of my town for 5 minutes, cut a right, crossed the river and were on the path up the mountain. By then it had started drizzling again!! A short distance up the hills we started breaking a sweat under the rain coats. But then the rain had stopped so we took off the coats. This continued for a while, put-on/put-off coat!! Rwandans are allergic to rain it seams so they tend to stay indoor and off the streets when it rains!! Strange behavior for a country that gets rain almost 9 months out of the year!! However, this worked in our favor as the kids and adults were out of sight and we were not followed by a wave of little kids or stared at by adults sipping on local banana bear!!
On my many hikes to mount Kabuye I would always get slowed down and never make it to the top by kids yelling muzungu and running behind while mothers inviting you to their homes!! I also get caught up taking pictures of the amazing landscape and little kids, showing them their pictures on the small screen, and getting laughs and looks of amazement from them!!
But this time thanks to the rain and a determined group we were able to push on to the top with little interruption, especially after passing the small village towns and reaching altitude were little people live. The hike was amazing and the rain kept moving in and out but it never really poured on us! Instead it was getting misty which made for an awesome and spooky atmosphere. We ran into a kid that new my name but of course I didn’t recognize him and he asked to accompany us!! He led us through and offered to take us to Inzo y’ Imana or the House of God.
House of God is a cave with a spiral side wall which makes for a spiral ramp and 12 small chambers. The cave is in a rocky part of the mountain with some steep cliffs that would make for great mountain climbing. From there we continued along a steep hill going sideways and then straight climb to the top. The fauna was amazing and changed from farms of climbing beans and sorghum, to potatoes, which require colder weather. We then got so high where no one lives and the natural terrain of pine trees predominated. There was a beautiful water fall on the way. By the time we got to the very top, it was all pine trees with a small pond in the middle. We tried to find a clear spot away from the giant ants and set up there. At this point we had about 6 kids and two adults that insisted they were following us just to hang out!! I tried to make clear that they’re welcome to be around as long as they don’t ask for amafaranga at the end!! We then sat at the opposite end of the mountain and pulled out our lunch. I brought a bag of turtle bread for each of us, Tom brought his own bread and a jar of peanut butter, Anna had a trail mix and some teriyaki beef jerkeys. Of course we had to share our lunch and water with the kids sitting all around us. We gave them two loafs of bread to share and some trail mix, which I’m not sure they liked!!The site at the top was amazing, the clouds were moving fast and rising against the mountain side and then through a small break in the clouds we could see through down to the valley and I was able to make sense of where we were with the building from village very small!! Soon after, it got really foggy and cold!! Very cold we had to put our jackets on and were still shivering. At this point we decided we better start heading down!!
The entire time we were climbing up, the clouds above were so thick we couldn’t see where were heading and at some height we couldn’t see below to the valley either. But on the way down, and after the fog has lifted up, the clouds broke and we were treated to amazing views. As we crossed around the mountain top again and with the land below clear, I could tell that we were facing north. As we continued heading down, I thought I saw what would pass for a lake in between the other mountain tops.
That was lake Ruhondo, which is a little over an hour drive from where we were. It was amazing to be able to see that far and had we climbed back up to the top and a little around we would’ve been treated to a panoramic view of the Virunga Volcanoes in Musanze. The hike down with the clouds gone was amazing and as we reached close to the bottom, looking behind us and up, we could see the enormity of the mountain and how high we hiked. We all though it was a blessing the view was obstructed going up which lessened any possible discouragements of the task ahead!!The hike took a little over 8 hours with the time we spent in the cage and a lunch break as well as stops for pictures and chats with the villagers!! I totally would do it again and will be going up there again!!
