Chillin in Butare Rwanda tonite. I got here this morning after an
early bus ride from Kigali the capital. Its truly the land of a
thousand hills! Beautiful and orderly! Even the roads are mostly
quite good. Its quite a contrast from what I'm used to - in that
there is little forest left here, a taxi system, multi-ethnic
restaurants - stuff like this.
My way from Epulu to Butare was this. A 6 hour drive and night spent
in Beni. I did find a new favorite restaurant in Beni RDC - where
I'll go from now on. They served pizza! At any time of the day too.
And had crocs to decorate their courtyard's fountain. Nice one!
Sunday I caught a flight from Beni to Goma - which was only 1 hour,
but had to have been the most magnificent flight scenery I've ever
seen/most photos snapped per minute - even though it was cloudy. We
flew right over Virunga National Park - Lake Edward, the Albertine
Rift and past the brooding Nyiragongo volcano before landing in the
runway thats been carved from a the 2002 lava flows. At one point,
our little plane was level with really unique looking afromontane
vegetation - 10,000 feet and equatorial rays makes for some pretty
unique environments.
After all that - hopped the border and got on a bus to Kigali which
took three hours. I sat next to a nice Rwandan nurse named Capitoline
and spoke with her a melange of English and French - Rwanda is
friendly to francophone and anglophones! Score. She even bought me
some roast goat!
When I got to Kigali it was nearly dark. Very clean and quiet city
from what I saw. A friendly guy Marcel found me and took me to get a
SIM card, a ticket for an early morning bus from a different company,
and told me how to find my hotel - all without asking for anything.
The hotel had Indian food! Quite nice!
Now I'm in Butare at another workshop - number 2 out of 3. Its nice
town. More soon!!
