Friends and Gorillas

(posted by Janine)

Sorry: we haven’t been very active in writing lately. Part of the reason is that we have been very happy getting friends over, and of course we needed to spend all our spare (non-working) hours with them. We got the most out of it: biking through all the poor and rich neighbourhoods of town, showing them Kigali’s nightlife (and dancing moves!) and spending lovely hours at the lakeside with great swimming, grilled fish and evening-fires.

 

BBQ at our house: Dennis, Tine, Mikkel, Laetitia, Mikkel

Our first ‘visiting team’ were Tine and Mikkel, who spent 3 weeks in Rwanda.  I am pretty sure they saw more of the country than either of us (or perhaps any other tourist) ever did.  We had a great time with bbq's, rwandan-style aerobics and varagi-gin tonic. We also spent a super relaxing weekend at the lake together, 3hours from Kigali. 

The next ‘team’ –all the way from Holland- were Melchior and Jeroen, who came with a mission: visiting DRC Congo (to climb this volcano). Although Mikkel and I were able to get a visa in Kigali (not without trouble, but hey –it’s Africa), the others were told by the Congolese embassy to get their 285-dollar-visa at the border. But this was easier said than done. We ended up spending 6 long, hot and hungry hours at the border … without success!

 

Awkward attempts to bribe the border guys in broken French, wave with our dollars (well, not literally) or to give them the sad-desperate look and strategic words: 'we just want to see the gorillas!’ were all in vain…Many waiting hours later, they decided simply not to let us in. Sliiiightly frustrating: Goma turned out a no-go. We tried to make it a psychological learning experience by telling ourselves and each other that ‘money cannot buy everything’ and ‘you cannot always expect things to work out as you plan it’. We even started to believe that it was not our faith to be there; that this bloody volcano might erupt the next day. But it didn’t and we had to take a nap and a swim in the nearby lake Kivu to realize that life’s not so bad after all! 

And we ended up having a great time in Rwanda instead, with vulcanos (ok no active ones) and, for our friends, even the much-wanted-close up gorilla experience. Mikkel and I also got a little bonus, since we spotted the wild gorillas from the top of the mountain/volcano:

Strolling with the locals in vulcanic northern Rwanda

The cold cratertop of the vulcano in Virunga national parc

Gorilla's in the mist (spotted from far above)

And a few more...:-)