After a few days of hiking on the Congo Nile Trail, Kersten and I decided we were ready to tackle Besote Volcano, one of the peaks in Rwanda’s Volcano National Park. Our real goal was to hopefully see the gorillas during the hike, as we heard reports from other travelers being lucky. To guarantee seeing the gorillas, you had to pay the exorbitant fee of $1500 USD. That was definitely not in our budget, so we decided to take our chances with Besoke.
We took the bus from Gisenyi to the town of Musenze and pitched our tents in the backyard of a local guesthouse and went to find a buffet. This was not a true buffet like the one at the end of our Congo Nile hike where we could go up as many times as we wanted, but Rwandan style, where you pile as much food as you can on one medium sized plate. By now, we had got the hang of it.
The next morning, after a breakfast of avocado toast, we were picked up by a 4×4 to take us to the entrance of the National Park. One has to wonder, with the increasing presence of paved roads everywhere, seemingly except to national parks, if there is some lobbying to keep the roads rough and charge tourists a lot of money to arrive. A cheap tuk tuk was out of the question.
Combined with the $75 hike fee, it was not a cheap day, but at least far cheaper than $1500! And we got a rather delicious latte before we started.
We had been warned that the hike was muddy, but we were not prepared for a continuous trail of almost knee deep, treachourously slippy mud encasing what used to be dirt stairs, all the way up the volcano. Going down was actually worse. I managed to fall three times, even while being guided down by the hand by a generous porter who insisted he should carry my bag, as if that was the problem. It was not. And I definitely did not want to pay for that service!
Luckily, the views were incredible, and apparently that was rare for the rainy season. Unluckily, we did not see the coveted gorillas. But at least we tried! Kirsten and I were sore for the next 4 days after this hike.
We spent one last night in Rwanda and Musenze (cleaning our clothes and hiking boots) , and headed across the border to Uganda to meet up with Embla, from my overland tour from Cape Town to Vic Falls, who had been volunteering in Kisoro for the last month. She didn’t have space in her apartment, but she generously offered to let us camp on the concrete outside in the gated complex. The other residents definitely thought we were crazy.
