Dec 5
Our transfer into the Democratic Republic of the Congo (the DRC) was remarkably simple – well, by African standards, anyway. The border crossing was a very short moto ride down the road from our hostel, and we proceeded with our departure paperwork, and our Ebola temperature screening (still all clear, for those who were worried ;P ), and then things got a little tense. We handed our paperwork and yellow fever vaccination certificates over, and got told to wait. After spending five minutes or more waiting for instructions on what to do next, I got curious and went around the corner to read a small poster. It was then that I noticed a woman in a small room holding our yellow fever certificates – it turns out we were supposed to go to see her to get them back, but no one told us that… I collected those and brought them to the customs officials at the counter and then waited some more. They wanted to know whether we had proof of a visa purchase, or any sort of paperwork to go with our gorilla permits. Nope… We were told by Virunga National Park that our visas would be ready at the border. So we waited some more. Eventually, an ICCN (park) truck pulled up and our visas were “magically” sorted out a short while later – we were on our way.
Our first impressions of Goma were… interesting. There are a phenomenal amount of vehicles from various aid organisations – almost 1 in 5 seemed to be from an NGO or the UN. Interspersed amongst all of the 4x4s were a great variety of motos, giant wooden flat-bed wheelbarrows with elongated handles, and large wooden scooters known as chukudu. As we learned once we got in the Land Rover with Éric, our park driver, the main road to the border was only paved four months ago, and when we hit the other roads in Goma, it became very clear why that paved road was so popular: the rest of the city is a mess. The city was destroyed by a volcanic eruption in 2002 and its citizens are still digging out of the rubble. I learned, unexpectedly, that I have a prejudice about development and judge economic status by the amount of colour in a city’s architecture. It was strange to see a city built largely out of black volcanic bricks; to see fences made out of piles of volcanic rock. To see a place so devoid of colour, so stark, was almost overwhelming. If I thought Gisenyi’s backroads felt post-apocalyptic, then this place resembled a city suddenly inhabited after an apocalyptic atomic holocaust.
Éric drove us an hour up the N2 “highway,” a road so heavily rutted that, when he announced we were turning off the highway, I almost burst out laughing because it was hard to believe that the road could get any rougher. Every few kilometres, there was a bus or truck stranded on the side of the road with a flat tire or ruined suspension. We passed two large UN camps, and dozens of small huts with armed military sitting in front of them (we later learned that these tiny huts are actually their homes). After turning off the “highway”, we started along a road that would take us to Bukima Camp, a tented camp where we’d spend the night before heading out on our gorilla trek. Calling the track a “road” is perhaps the greatest exaggeration I’ll ever make in my life, but “absence of grass” doesn’t really roll off the tongue very smoothly. If I were using Latin, I think the appropriate term would be trackus horribilus. At one point, Rich was being tossed from side to side so violently that the sight of it set me laughing so hard I was actually squeaking, the air being forced from my lungs each time I was slammed against the car’s interior. Éric heard my squeaks and mistook them for sounds of distress, so suggested we stop for a moment. When he turned around and saw me smiling and wiping tears off my cheeks, he realised that all was well, and the rollercoaster ride continued while we clung to the armrests and hoped for the best.
Bukima Camp turned out to be a magical little spot on the park’s boundary. The camp is made up of four double and two twin tents, all of which have different views out to some of Virunga’s volcanoes, plus the mess tent, which occupies pride of place in the centre of camp, and offers awesome views when the weather is clear. We were treated to views of five volcanoes in the Virunga range, including Karisimbi, Mikeno, and Nyiragongo, which is active and offers overnight camping options along the crater’s edge.
Service at the camp was pretty spectacular and will likely be the closest I ever come to feeling like a celebrity. We were offered hot water for showers, welcome drinks, seats on the deck, and just about anything else we could possibly ever want. There was minimal English spoken, which meant I started working on my French again, and relied on the only other couple in the camp – a Parisian woman who has spent a great deal of her life in the DRC and a very broad-stroke European Brit (British by birth; Heinz 57 by upbringing) – to translate when my language skills failed us.
We enjoyed an excellent dinner together and then sat out by the firepit that had been set up for us. With no light pollution and a full moon on the rise, the skies were so unbelievably bright that my long-exposure photos ended up looking like they were taken in full daylight. As the full moon rose above the trees behind us, the clouds atop the volcanoes all cleared away, affording us breathtaking views out across the valleys all the way to the five peaks. It was already very clear that this was truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
It was early to bed that night; no one wanted to be tired when it came time to start the morning hike.
Grateful for: hot water bottles
