Annemarie:
After a rather indulgent Christmas we needed to hit the road again so we headed north to the Parc de Volcans and the challenge of a trek up Mt Bisoko, an extinct volcano with a crater lake as the reward at the top.
The National Park protects the Rwandan sector of the Virunga Mountains, a range of six extinct and three active volcanoes that are shared by the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda and Rwanda. It’s most famous for its population of mountain gorillas, but we were wanted to follow them later in Bwindi Impenetrable Forest on the Ugandan side so opted to simply trek.
If anyone has watched the recently released documentary film Virunga you might not be surprised to know that we set off on our trek guided by a park ranger and supported by porters and were soon to be joined by an armed squad of Rwandan soldiers, but to us it seemed quite strange. We were expecting a strenuous walk but surely nothing needing six AK47s and a lot of extra muscle. How wrong we were …
It started gently enough, striding up from the village below, through fields white with the daisy-like flowers of Pyrethrum and dark green with potatoes. We huffed and puffed a bit behind a team of three young French women who were on a weekend off from their volunteering work and fit as fleas. We had eschewed the help of porters but three seemed to be following along anyway; we were a mixed group to say the least.
As fields gave way to the eucalyptus of the foothills we started to see views worthy of scenes from Gorillas in the Mist, the wooded slopes lit by the relatively early morning sun burning off the moist air. We were making good progress now but round a bend in the path we stopped, met by six armed soldiers. After a bit of chat they fell in and joined us. Martin questioned the guide as to why we might need them and it seemed the guns were needed to frighten off buffalo we might surprise. Hmmm?
The going rapidly got tougher, steep steps had been roughly cut in the mountainside between dense undergrowth. Thick red mud sucked at our boots when we couldn’t find a drier route through. We huffed and puffed a bit more and soon one of the porters was helping me take the bigger steps up and avoid the worst of the mud. Turning round for a picture you could see how rapid our ascent was but clouds were now gathering. Progress became slower as we reached the sign for Dian Fossey’s grave; it was seriously steep and treacherously slippy. ‘My’ porter was a brilliant support; the French team was also being given a helping hand now and even Martin succumbed to an occasional push as we climbed ever upwards.
Then the hail began and what we had thought was a rocky, muddy path showed its true colours, it was a stream bed! We scrambled to the summit, took a quick wet snap of the crater-lake and were told this was also the Congolese border and we should probably descend quite quickly.
We needed no encouragement, but if up had been tough, down was tougher. The army AND the porters were needed to help us all now as we slid and slithered though mud, rocks and undergrowth. My incredibly strong and waterproof walking boots were now letting in water like a pair of slippers and I was pretty fed up - but my support now was from one of the young soldiers and he couldn’t have been kinder and more cheerful. As we broke back out of the thick vegetation the sun came out again and as if on cue he turned round with a huge smile ‘You go now..’ and he and his team disappeared into the trees, instantly invisible.
I was never so grateful to see a potato field as we came back into the cultivated landscape. Children of the workers weeding the crop raced ahead, giggling, to stare at us curiously from behind their mother’s skirts. What on earth had we been doing up their mountain? What on earth indeed.
Footnote:
The money we paid to enter the park, to trek and to the porters for their help provides a valuable source of income for the area and the individuals. The film Virunga is an incredible testament to the bravery and dedication of park rangers like ours. It’s set in the Congolese Virunga National Park and the town of Goma and describes the time just two years ago when the rebel army, M23, were battling with the Congolese army; the park and it’s population were caught in the crossfire, both actual and political. For added British shame there’s also an oil exploration company involved in the story. Watch Virunga now on Netflix - it's up for a BAFTA.