Beach Day + Bonus Congo

After yesterday’s mental and physical bruising on the volcano, we were ready for a day of relaxation. Where do the locals in Musanze go to chill out? The beach, apparently. We loaded up the van with all the dinner guests from yesterday, plus another one of Jeff’s friends, Bahati (our new arrival from Kigali, more on him later), and we drove the two hours to Gisenyi, along Lake Kivu.

On the way we noted the prevalence of larger coach-style buses along the route, which were a big change from the smaller vans piled with people that were common in Kenya and Uganda. Turns out that Rwanda has a pretty solid public bus system and these coach buses were running routes from Kigali to Musanze and the Musanze to Gisenyi. They run at least every hour, and that’s how our Bahati made the trip up to Musanze from his home in Kigali.

Bahati works for the Rwandan government and does biodiversity studies across the country. They divide up the landscape into small chunks and then visit the place several times over the period of a year to count species like birds, plants, etc. On this trip he was checking on a team up towards Musanze, so he came a day early to hang out with us. It was interesting to hear about his progression through university — he was aiming for a biotech degree but ultimately was forcefully redirected to biodiversity studies. He and Liz had a lot of shared experiences and were fast friends.

At the lake (one of the Great Lakes of East Africa, I might add), we rolled right into a swanky beachside spot called the Serena Hotel, like we owned the joint. Actually, it was Denis with all the confidence, because in a previous career he would take some daytime stopover time along the beach. We grabbed some tables and chairs and set up under some shade for a nice, relaxing lunch along the lake.

Meanwhile, Jeff thought he was being coy, but the truth is that this trip to the lake was all a Trojan horse to get him across the border to Goma (Congo). He wasn’t going to ditch us that easily so we all piled back in the van and drove ten minutes to one of the busiest border crossings in Africa, the Petite Barrière.

Once we made it to the crossing point, we parked the van and Jeff and Bora headed to the immigration line to see if he could cross over for some reconnaissance. Bora had a friend who, it turns out, was in charge of the Rwanda-side of the crossing that day. While they were doing that, Denis, Tim, Liz and I meandered around just like your normal set of tourists checking out the border between Congo and Rwanda. We chatted with some of the agents, who seemed oddly prepared with facts such as “90,000 pedestrians cross this border on a normal day” and “residents of Congo and Rwanda who live along the border get issued slips of paper that serve to expedite their crossing on a daily basis” and “many residents of Goma will travel across the border to Rwanda and fill their water containers, because there is no safe water on the Goma side.” Meanwhile, hundreds, if not thousands, of people were streaming through gates and security checkpoints as we waited — just their normal Sunday.

Jeff was disappointed, because as I had (ahem!) suggested to him earlier, Americans need to get a visa in advance in order to cross from Rwanda into the Congo. But even still Jeff would not be deterred and Bora’s buddy agreed to escort us over for a quick visit, albeit in the form of a chat with his counterpart in the Congo. So off we went, a bunch of folks ‘just walkin’ here’ and before we knew it we were (technically) in Congo talking to the top guy. We took in a portrait of President Tshisekedi along with an array of high tech temperature cameras looking to stop any ebola from crossing either direction on the border. Everyone was in good spirits, yet all of this was for naught, because unless there was an emergency, there was to be no crossing into Congo for Jeff, who rightly pointed out that normally you would be using that emergency border crossing to get out of Congo, not get in!

So, back across to Rwanda and back to the van and back to Musanze and back to our hotel, where we were excited to see that our shoes had been cleaned, along with all of our dirty laundry — clean clothes! Tonight, TimB’Liz would be on our own for dinner, which involved a short boda boda ride down to a very nice pub-style restaurant in the city center named Isange. We had delicious pasta, curry, giant beers for three, all for about $15 and we watched Arsenal football beat up on Newcastle. Arsenal was the local favorite — they are sponsored by Rwanda. Look for the logo saying “Visit Rwanda” on their shoulder uniforms!