Kibuye – Kigali – Jinja

The ride through western Rwanda was absolutely beautiful; I’ve included a few photos that I took leaning out the window on the way back from Kibuye yesterday. I forgot that since I was much further south the sun goes down about an hour earlier than it does in Jinja. As a result, my four o’clock bus to Kibuye from the capital did not arrive until after dark and during a rainstorm. Upon my arrival I was informed that the hotel that I was planning on staying at had closed six months ago, luckily my guidebook had a list of other area hotels. I stood under an awning watching the rain, thinking about what to do for about twenty minutes before a kind gentleman came up and introduced himself. My new friend turned out to be a Ugandan born Rwandan Journalist working in the area, he was nice enough to show me to a hotel and get me checked in. After saying goodbye I got accustomed to my room and made a wonderful discovery…THE HOTEL HAD HOT WATER!!!!
Since my last hot shower was on June 8th in Wisconsin, I found this to be quite a treat. After a shower that I guess must’ve lasted about a half hour, I wandered upstairs to have dinner on the hotel’s terrace. No matter where you are in the world, you find that some restaurant will always have some form of spaghetti with tomato sauce (at least I think it was tomato sauce). Before heading to bed I turned on the TV in my room to see what was on, only one channel came in and a soccer game was on (big surprise). The funny thing was that as I watched the channel kept changing, I learned later that all of the TVs in the entire hotel ran off of the same cable box. In other words, the remote is up in the restaurant and whatever is being watched on that TV is what’s on throughout the entire hotel.
The next morning I woke up and walked out onto the balcony attached to my room and was treated to a great view of the bay and Lake Kivu (see above). Over breakfast I was told that if I wanted to reach Kigali before the evening I would have to take the ten o’clock bus. This didn’t leave much time for sightseeing but when I planned this trip I told myself it was more about journeys than destinations.
Next began one of the most interesting parts of the trip thus far, I climbed aboard a small bus bound for Kigali yesterday morning with the intend of having a short ride with another night in Kigali. About a half hour outside of Kigali we caught up with a Kampala coach bus (the company I road to Rwanda with), it appeared that it was heading to Nairobi (via Kampala). After mulling it over for a few minutes it occurred to me that life would be a bit easier if I headed back to Uganda on the same day. Once we reached the city center I jumped out and ran the few blocks from the Sorta tours office to Kampala coach, I bought my ticket and stepped onto the bus as it pulled out of the station, I manage to get a photo of the taxi park just as I was settling into my seat. I was able to clear immigration much faster this time around, though through a misunderstanding I was only given a seven day visa, so essentially the questions of whether or not I was going to Kenya has been answered.
The only disadvantage of taking that bus was that I missed lunch, luckily I had a bunch of wheat biscuits and cliff bars in my bag. Ten hours later I was in Kampala, however I still had to change buses to get back to my house in Jinja. I walked along the row of buses till I found mine and threw my bag in an empty seat; when I got off to find a bathroom I couldn’t help but notice the gentleman welding a lugnut to one of the rims of my bus, I’m not expert but that’s not something I like to see being done to a vehicle I’m about to ride on. The nice thing about Kampala coach is that they give you a bit of food when you stop in a major city, so I got in line by an area that looked like a kitchen (kinda) and got my plate of rice and several pieces of goat’s meat. When I walked over to the eating area the sound of forks hitting plates stopped briefly while I found a spot to sit, the idea that it’s not polite to stare doesn’t apply here.
I was thankful when the bus finally left the station, after a short ninety minutes we crossed the Nile River and I knew that my stop was only about two minutes away. Unfortunately the bus blew right through Jinja and continued moving West, I moved to the front of the bus as quick as I could and tried to explain to the conductor that I need to get off. I was finally able to get them to stop in a town called Bugembe, a place that I’ve worked in but is no short distance from town. It all worked out okay in the end; I signaled a boda boda (motorcycle taxi) from across the street and was at my door about fifteen minutes later.
That’s it for Rwanda, back in Jinja for two days, next stop…Kenya