Getting to Cyangugu wasn't a whole lot of fun. Even though the roads were perfectly paved, my seatmate spent most of the journey throwing up into a paper bag. Plastic bags are illegal in Rwanda, an attempt to limit litter and pollution, but I had one handy so I gave him the plastic ziplock bag I use for storing my travel toilet paper. That was a slight improvement, although by then his paper bag had, well, leaked all over the floor. Oh dear. Not too much later, we came to a stand still in traffic. There was an accident ahead that was blocking the entire road, so we disembarked from our bus and walked to the other side of the accident, where we boarded another bus. At least this bus didn't have puke on the floor (I felt really badly for the people who had to get on our bus!).
Despite all this, it took about six minutes to fall in love with Rwanda. The immigration officer at the border parted the small group of people in front of me like Moses to declare, “On behalf of the Rwandan people of Rwanda, I am happy to welcome you to Rwanda!” I had to suppress a laugh as I wondered if the non-Rwandan people of Rwanda didn't want to welcome me. I think it had been awhile since he had seen a passport that wasn't from Burundi or Rwanda. Also, the scenery is stunning and you will definitely hear more about it in upcoming posts. Rwanda is nicknamed The Land of a Thousand Hills and this is no understatement. Many people used bicycles to get around and, rather than pedal up exhausting hill after hill, several people opted instead to grab onto a truck and let it do the work! It made me think of Michael J. Fox and his skateboard in Back to the Future.
I spent a night in mellow Cyangugu, located in the country's southwest and on the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo. The border is a narrow footbridge and it was busy at all hours of the day.
Cyangugu is a fishing town on Lake Kivu so there were plenty of fishing boats around. That's about all there was in Cyangugu!
From here, I hopped a bus for about six hours to Kigali, the capital. I spent a relaxed afternoon with friends from Peace Corps who had recently moved to Kigali before meeting up with a friend from the UK to spend the week traveling the country together.