in rwanda now, about to head over to the DRC for a day trip... never thought i would write that sentance. there is a town, goma, near the 'rwandan muskoka' that is apparently like an african pompeii/massive refugee site. i know a few people that have been over recently and have said its something worth seeing... maybe a bit of a wake up from the nice sides of africa that we've been lucky enough to see so far.
we left uganda with a bang after meeting up with some ugandan break dancers at our hostel. they took us to their church to show us some moves... best part was them trying to teach eric and this british guy we met how to dance. again, couldn't have been more white. we went out to a bar with them after for one final round of nile specials.. oh and we also finally found jager at some strange irish pub in the suburbs of kampala. go figure.
after that, down to kigali. did the genocide memorial and went out to visit a church. tough to describe... all very haunting, obviously. i don't think i'd ever seen a human skull, let alone hundreds/thousands just sitting in one room before.
after failed attempts at organizing gorillas in kigali, eric and i decided we would go climb a mountan (karasimbi, 4507m) in western rwanda. dev has a bad knee so she checked into a hotel in a near by city and took 2 days to relax a bit.
the mountain trip was cold. we didn't plan for this at all and im just starting to thaw now (came down yesterday). we camped on the side of the mountain 2 nights ago and apparently a sleeping bag liner is more than insufficient. cheese and altitude is also apparently a bad combination for me so, along with being frozen, i kept throwing up and counting down the minutes to 530, when we had to get up.
we hiked to the second portion of the mountain that morning... i felt like a walking corpse. once i made it to the treeline, about 500m (1 hour worth of walking) from the top, i figured that was good enough. we'd had stunning views of the surrounding mountains to that point so i figured i got the idea. i also wasnt convinced i could actaully walk up any further. the entire morning had literally been straight up hill.
all in all, the hike was pretty cool. certainly different than any experience i had in western canada... i did make sure to sing the sound of music (in my head..) for my mom. we were also being escorted by the rwandan military (literally 10 guys with excessive guns in front and behnd us). it was apparently to defend us from buffalo.. but why a buffalo would need to be shot with a rocket launcher is beyond me. maybe we were a bit to close for comfort to areas of the DRC.
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