4 days walking through the country side of Rwanda
This hike is a good way to immerse into Rwandan rural life while enjoying scenic hilly views of coffee plantations and immense beautiful lake Kivu.
As the way is winding up and down following the shore line, you pass through dozens of buzzy villages where the kids get super excited seeing the “mazungus”, shouting repeatedly “good morning” (some clearly without understanding what it means), some would follow you until the end of their village, sometimes quietly staring at you with unhidden curiosity, others would ask “how are you” or”what’s your name” (again often without understanding what they say), cheeky ones would shout “give me money” or “give me ..” whatever they see on you (in our case banana). You create this wave of excitement in every village, that after your 15th gets a bit repetitive.. and so unfair for the “village 15” kids as our reactions and responses would get more and more brief.
The walk is getting more and more rural as you progress, you see less and less motos and no cars. First part of the day people are working in the field, we learned a few local words and were greating everyone we met, always getting back a polite answer accompanied by the Rwandan open hearted welcoming smile and open hands gesture.
Organisation and practical stuff.
Baggage:
Moving South from Rubavu (Gisenyi) we arranged for our large bag to be sent to the last (night 4) hotel in Kibuye, and only had small ruckzags with essentials with us.
Navigation
For navigation we downloaded offline map (maps.me app) and a .kml file with the trail. Seriously, it’s hard to get lost even without the navigation, as the way is signposted, though it’s good to have it sometimes just to verify and be sure on certain forks. So you do not need a guide.
Supplies
Roughly every 1-2 hours there are small villages with shops where you can buy water and simple food (mostly bread and deep fried snacks).
Where to stay overnight
Accommodation is not on every corner, but if you plan your days right, each night you can stay at guesthouses where you don’t need a tent.
Here is our experience day by day
Day 1 Gisenyi to Cyimbiri.
At Gisenyi we stayed at Centre d’Accueil Saint François Xavier. I can recommend this place for budget travellers like us it is a good one: clean and tidy, fast internet, hot water, good restaurant with an outside space and only 15,000 RWF for a twin room (they had no doubles available).
From our hotel we took a moto ride to the Brewery where we started our 8 hours long hike of the day.
Following the phone navigation and the signs we arrived at our first stop over – Cyimbiri guest house. The guesthouse is perched straight on the beach and provides fabulous view on the lake from the terrace and was open exclusively for us. The house is charming, rooms are clean with ensuite bathroom with cold shower. It is ran by Baptiste Bible school, so no alcohol is allowed. The dinner was great, the host, Anastasia (knew just a few words of English) started cooking shortly after our arrival and at 8pm served us a buffet of 4 dishes and delicious fresh fish from the lake in tomato souse. The 4 dishes were: chips, rice, cabbage sauté and beans. We were amazed to see so much food made just for 2 of us. We spent the rest of the evening reading about history of Rwanda.
Day 2 Cyimbiri to Kinunu.
About 5 hours walk and we arrived at Kinunu guest house. (There are two accommodation options here – more expensive lodge and 35000 per night guest house). This was my favourite stay in Rwanda so far and not only because of hot shower. The guest house is beautiful, with adjacent fruit garden and a lake view. The moment you enter the gate you relax and want to stay here forever. It is run by the coffee plantation and washing station owner so you can get a tour around the station and understand the process of coffee making from a tree to your starbucks cappuccino cup in London. In fact, Starbucks do buy green (not roasted) coffee from this region and this specific station. About 500 local people are involved in coffee production throughout a year, 90% of which goes on export. The washing station not only uses coffee from their own plantation, but also buys it from other farmers of the region. Coffee business is the main source of life here.
There is a great sandy beach near by, of which we took advantage in the morning. Water is amazingly transparent, like a sea. There is no crocodile or other nasties, however read about bathing in African lakes before you make a call whether to have a deep or not 🙂
Day 3 Kinunu to Musasa
About 4 hours walk and this is where the lake views are of their best. If you take this trail north to south like us, you hit the Musasa Basecamp (one of the 2 accommodation option) first. It looked very empty and we still had plenty of stamina, so we decided to proceed to option 2: Musasa homestay. Which is really basic stay, really feels more like local home than a guest house, so key is in the name 🙂
Day 4 Musasa to Mushubati then bus to Kibuye
Early start and by about 1pm we made it to the paved road where our trail stopped. Bus stop is immediately seen when the dirt road reaches the tarmack. Representative of bus company is selling tickets at the stop. We had mixed feelings about getting back to the world of pavements, busses and internet.
In Kibuye we stayed at Home St. Johns, another place i would recommend, as they had rooms options for various budgets and a fantastic view from the terrace restaurant.
Comments (1)
So beautiful !!
Thanks for sharing it.
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