Pictures from Gisenyi

Well after my brief diversion in the last post, I wanted to post some pictures of Gisenyi. The first round here is pictures of the way to Gisenyi from Kigali. It really was impossible to do the landscape justice, particularly while taking pictures out of the window of a packed out minibus rocketing down the side of a mountain. But I did try to at least get some...







The hash was all up and down and around Gisenyi and we had some really nice views of the lake and the DRC. I would say that the definite lowest point of the hash, both geographically and figuratively, was when we hiked through the "bathroom" of the local fisherman. Apparently, the field was clean when they set the path at 5 am but was definitely NOT at 4 pm. Oh well. All in a days adventure. And since the bathroom ended on the beach and we then immediately got smashed by waves from the lake (I did say it was a huge lake right? It had waves), I dont think too many of us really gave the bathroom much of a second thought. Besides we were pretty clean, or at least really wet, about two seconds after stepping onto the beach. After those two surprises though, we rebelled against the leader of the hash and decided to follow a slightly more reasonable path that took us on a road. Much nicer. And of course since we were a soaking wet group of muzungus and Ugandans, we collected a nice parade of followers. You can sort of see them stretching back down the road there.

But after the beach bathroom bit, we got to the business at hand of scaling an essentially vertical hill without a path. And a lot of children as observers. It really puts you in your place to be sweating and red-faced struggling up a hill, when a bunch of little kids run up and down the hill around. Shoeless and herding goats. Very inspiring. There were however some great views of Gisenyi and of the DRC in the distance.


The lake is surrounded by terraced hills. Apparently on a clear day you can see all the way across the lake to the volcanoes ringing the other side. We were not there on a clear day, so it just seemed to go on forever. The peninsula of this picture is actually the DRC. That is how close we were. At one point, when we were trying to find the club at about 11pm after eating dinner and drinking on the beach, we ended up at the border. Not surprisingly, they did not let us through.



This is Gisenyi in the foreground and Goma in the DRC in the background. They are very close, but separated by culture, war, and a well protected fence. However, dont think that everyone in DRC is poor. These houses are just across the border in the DRC. It seems like they are probably doing pretty well...
Well, I wanted to put up some of the photos of the hash and the beach. And I put up some of the hash. Unfortunately the beach pictures involve my white white skin in a bathing suit. So, sorry, but no one is seeing those. I can assure you though, the beach is gorgeous. Here, I guess I can give you a little something to keep you going...



Until next time xoxo Little Linnea