Ups and Downs
Ups and Downs
Posted on: Monday, June 24th, 2013 at 7:18pm
I Was supposed to be separating from Peter to head west over to Lake Kivu into the small town of Ciangugu, while he headed South into Burundi due to his limited time to tour. After peering at the elevation chart and finding out that there was to be a climb to 2750m, and then 200 kilometres of downhill on dirt track I changed my tune, and went along with him. I’ve been having problems with momentum and motivation lately and figured it would be a good chance to stay focused on touring and not get stuck in cities like I have been as of late. An early morning attempt at leaving Butare in the Southern Province of Rwanda was quickly derailed by finding CXC – Coffee Connexxions on the cities perimeter beckoning me in for a visit. Definitely worth the trip. An actual coffee shop with couches, books, power plugs, and even an industrial grade roaster that can handle 20kg in 30 minutes all inside the facilities where one of the two baristas grinds fresh coffee especially for your order. The Rwandan ‘Bourbon’ coffee was brought over and planted in early 1900’s under German colonial times and has been flourishing ever since, and so far it’s been the best tasting coffee I’ve had in Africa. Move over Kenya. I was suffering to even swallow a sip in Uganda as their coffee seems to have a funky aftertaste and tastes like Peanuts to me. So faced with a situation of a food pannier that was waiting to be filled with food to get me to other countries, I opted instead to fill it up with coffee – Priorities! 1.5kg of Fresh Coffee now took over the empty pack, and off I went through the remaining areas of Rwanda wit its breathtaking viewpoints, windy roads and steep descents.
It didn’t take longer than two and a half hours to reach the Burundian Border, where the guards wrote everything by hand in a tattered ledger book, with little to no technology in sight. I’d have been surprised if power even existed in the area. Upon Entry it was apparent this was a new country, and likely the way Rwanda looked before the buckets of money flowed their way as a world wide apology for turning their back during the civil issues of the 1990s. Tattered clothing on children, houses and shacks made from straw, little to no goods available to purchase, and if you could purchase them you’d use tattered Burundian Francs, that seem to be if you touch them they would fall apart. Get the sanitizer ready after touching one of them, these things are carrying some nasties with them. Upon entering into the country is a steep climb, with a beautiful view of the valley where the borders meet, only it seems that new Africa is starting to take shape. A huge sign advertising telephone service wrecks the view, quite odd for an area that has no power of technology to begin with. At least Burundi does not have the many buildings painted with advertisements for the paint companies, telephone companies, or cooking oil – That phenomenon of strings of 10 buildings painted the same colour with the same ad in a row never made it here… yet.
In a village where there is no power, this sign seems out of place, it’s also huge.
At 75 cents for a 730mL bottle you can only wish that this one is actually for sale. It’s OK beer, better cold.
Burundi is situated in the same geological shelf as Rwanda, and parts of D.R. Congo, so the hills are coming non stop, taxing energy for climbing, and offering some very long descents. Dropping over 1400metres in one run into the capital city of Bujumbura made for some amazing riding, where the temperature went from a ‘hands frozen on the grips’ to a ‘perma smile on the face enjoying the breeze’ before stopping at 750metres above sea level, where the land meets the shores of Lake Tanganyika, the longest lake in the world, and also the second deepest. But let’s talk about that place later. There are people everywhere in Burundi, with little to do in the mountains for jobs everyone seems to be lazing around if they are adults, drinking cheap beer (It seems for under .75 cents you can get a 730ml Primus! Cheapest Beer yet in terms of volume yet in Africa), yelling or cheering when cycling past either in French, English, Kiswahili, KiRwandan, or their own native language Kirundi. Any conversation with a local can be any one of the languages and often shifts along the way to whatever is preferable, quite unique. If it’s not the adults, it’s the massive amounts of children everywhere peering in their ratty clothes, or running behind the bicycle yelling, trying to get attention. It’s probably best to say that upon stopping anywhere in this country that within a minute one is to be swarmed by people. It’s impossible to gain silence without people watching you – as some have likely not seen a Mzungu in the area for a long time, especially in some of the villages. We were forced to go into a village and seek the help of a local to find a place to stay after losing light and not being able to find a guesthouse to stay in. A friendly woman offered to host us at her place, but changed her town as soon as the rest of the men found out in the drinking establishment, taking us on a long drawn out trek across the village to introduce various shopkeepers, a drunk Police Officer who took us back to his workplace, letting us camp on the facilities, not before telling us to leave passports with him over night. Not a chance. It’s funny, in these situations you just have to remember to have a huge smile on your face but also be assertive at the same time. With dozens of people crowded around as the tents were setup, food was cooked, finally dispersing when I faked going to sleep retiring to the tent and letting out a few choice farts did they disappear, until 6am when the crowds started all over again.
The young men are carrying charcoal, goods, vegetables, onions, and other things back and forth to other villages and the capital cities on their rickety Chinese or Indian made bikes, where its even a struggle for a well tuned touring bicycle to navigate upon. The solution? Hang onto the back of one of the many trucks that are passing! It saves the leg muscles from tiring out, although it may cause a bit of stress on the arms. I’ve hung on a few times in my life, often scared that I’d hit a pothole, or find myself getting the handlebars trapped under the truck causing a crash and a twisted frame, also finding the process unstable at anything higher than 10km/h. Not these guys – at speeds of over 40km/h they sit on their top tube sideways, ascending and descending the hills, getting them to their destination in a fraction of time. Obviously following the rule of Safety Third, whatever one and two are I have not a clue, but I managed to capture a series of photos and even some video of this madness of four or five cyclists at a time holding onto one truck, or another bicycle, or just hanging off the back of the doors. Crazy. I shattered my previous top speed record in 2011 in Burundi, flying down a hill at a mind blowing 82.6km/h – I didn’t think my bike could move that fast. I wouldn’t dare hit the brakes in fears of heating up the rims resulting in a tire blowout.
The capital of Burundi of Bujumbura was a bit of a let down – no real areas for lodging other than for $25 minimum a night in places that could be better used as broom closets, and while even though they offered hot water and internet, the internet was unusable, and hot water just wasn’t enough for justification for paying such a high price. Not only that, quarrels with hotel managers over changing fees were a problem, where we had a friend reserve rooms over the telephone for a specific price (30,000 Burundian Francs = $20) where upon arrival to the hotel and showing the skin colour the price immediately rose to $30 USD. First off, who carries USD in a country that doesn’t accept it as regular currency in the first place. After many battles of asking to look at the guest register to see what everyone else was paying, and attempting to speak to the manager it erupted into a he said she said shouting match for three hours outside the front gates, an angry mob searching for justice, from any of the sides. Not the way I wanted to spend a day, when it could have been spent at the beach, forcing the movement to yet another hotel, at similar prices, in poorer conditions. Bujumbura doesn’t have much going on for arts and culture, it’s a flat city with roads clogged with traffic and people hawking their wares on the corners all selling seemingly the same thing, until randomly out of nowhere one can find a ship selling fine Belgian Wines, or a Supermarket that sells Belgian Beers, and even sex toys (!). There’s a huge UN Presence here so they are likely the target market. After 3 days of trying to get anything accomplished in the capital city, frustrated at the fact the overpriced service on the telephone that only worked half the time, getting ripped off by anyone who you tried to speak to, it was time to leave, but not before visiting the coffee factory and adding yet MORE weight to the food pannier. I should be good for coffee for about two months now.
Peter making ammends with hotel manager after being royally ripped off – 3.5 hours later.
Off I went riding down Lake Tanganyika, where a strong headwind limited any sort of coasting for the entire time on a road which was in reasonable condition, a nice surprise as information that I’ve been hearing over the past year stated that it was a dusty dirt road and challenging to ride. Electronic mapping programs even routed away from the Lake for that reason up until this years release, so it was a breath of fresh air, all the way to the next big town where the prices dropped by 2/3 and the quality of rooms, food and beer prices, and friendliness jumped a couple hundred percent. The first few days of the country left me frustrated and angry, and I was beginning to write it off as a whole until these better days came. Going out to the only nightclub in the town was a letdown, similar to Rwanda where Karaoke/Lip-syncing seems to be all the rage, where everyone sits in plastic chairs and watches someone make a fool out of themselves, dancing, singing, often at music that is pitched up 20% without changing the key, so it sounds like a bunch of chipmunks. The performances are lackluster, but some of them get downright raunchy.
The same went for the final day of riding on the lake, ending in NyanzaLac, stopping at a bright, clean, hotel that could be classified as a resort in some countries with large portions of food, breathtaking sunsets, and even the possibility to swim in the lake, with its high waves from the large amounts of wind in the area, D.R. Congo showing off in the distance with not a single light shining when darkness came. Looking back, I would have much rather spent more time at this location as opposed to the complete rip off of Bujumbura – that city will go down as the worst Capital city to spend time in while in Africa.
There are thousands of Palm trees lining the lake, and being used for Palm Oil, which you can find for sale in large 5 gallon buckets, a dark red coloured substance that seems to be used for everything in cooking. It’s extremely heavy and while it keeps everything moving smoothly under the hood, it leaves quite an aftertaste, often resulting in some incredible heart burn and near barf experiences. It reminds me of the experience in Mozambique where everything was soaked in it as well, resulting in some very strange colorations of food. The omelettes are radioactive yellow, the beans are clown nose red, and everything just has a strange hue to it. If you aren’t eating something swimming in Palm Oil, it’s cheese, which seems to be quite the norm – for $1 a plate filled with cubes of decent cheese fill you up, often bunging up the internal movement system (hence the return to the Palm Oil food), and some of the locally caught fish is extremely flavourful. Inland it seems that cattle and goat meat is everywhere, bars offering “Nyama Choma” with plenty of warm beer to wash it down with. The only problem is that in such villages you seem to find a few locals which latch onto you for the entire night, often trying to squeeze you for a few beers, or in the midst of having your hands full help themselves to your plate of food, often disappearing when the plate is empty. It’s annoying, and hasn’t been seen this bad in any other country. Welcome back to Africa I guess Dave, I suppose I’d been spoilt with Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda.
Something seems to be seriously wrong with peoples eyes here. I’m not sure if its because I am noticing the massive amounts of people wearing a certain type of round smoked lens glasses, or noticing the opticians offices everywhere, but somethings up. Whoever brought the glasses here, whether it be an early 90’s stock overflow dumping over to Burundi, or a fascination with people like Denzel Washington it’s starting to actually weird me out. Even crazier are some of the haircuts on the women. We’ve seen the ‘Denzel’, the ‘Morgan Freeman’, and the personal favourite, the “Mike Tyson”. Pair it with the glasses and it’s hard not to crack up while riding by. At least the hair is natural, where in other countries its horse hair weaved into the scalp. Still, this is an eye opener, glasses or not.
NyanzaLac is extremely close to to the Tanzanian border, and the original plan was to ride into the port town of Kigoma, and take a ferry back into Zambia for my annual rest, but seeing as the visa for Burundi was a wallet thinning $90 USD for 30 days, I’ve opted to stick around a bit, riding inland through the mountains and cross back into Tanzania at a more northern border crossing. I’ve even decided against crossing into Zambia for the time being, opting to follow Peter back to his place of Mwanza for some rest, and to figure out what I want to do next. Uganda still holds a lot of appeal for me to ride and relax, Rwanda is screaming my name, jumping up and down for a revisit to explore every corner, and Zambia is sitting in the background wondering when I’ll be coming back for my third visit and ride. All of these countries are bordering where I’ve been stalling for the past year, Democratic Republic of Congo. It’s not safe in my mind to cross in at the east, insurgency and political strife still remain, and it’s be a 70% chance I’d find myself kidnapped, robbed entirely or worse to enter through these access points. I’ve been waiting patiently for a good entry vector, but nothing seems to be lightening up. I could use a rest, but I could also use some momentum as I fear the longer I stay idle, the more comfortable I get, but I actually do want to keep riding. I’ll give it a few weeks of thought in July to find out what’s happening and then set forward. I refuse to take a plane, taking apart the bicycle where components have rusted on, losing parts along the way just to cross a large expanse of land. Everything will work out, it always does, creative thought control and patience seem to be the key here.
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