Musanze was my last destination in Rwanda and it was equally beautiful as the other places I visited and guess what? Equally boring! Well, not exactly boring but we ran out of things to do pretty quickly since we didn't want to pay a lot of money to go on hikes and do activities.


Rwanda (as I said) is beautiful but I think they have gone a little bit too far with their tourism industry; they just raised the day permit for gorillas from $750 to $1500... for a 6 hour hike! That's just crazy!
Then you can't go on any proper hikes unless you pay a park entrance fee and a guide! It is crazy that we have to pay $75 to go see the crater lake, or at least $30 to enter any kind of park so for us traveling on a budget the choices were a little limited!

Once again we got on the local bus to move from Gisenyi to Musanze and had a pleasant ride in tarred streets  with beautiful views. Every time I walked the streets in Rwanda or rode the bus I was mesmerised by the many things people could carry on their head, especially women. By the time I headed to Musanze I had been in Africa for almost three months but more than any other country people carried very strange stuff on their head!
On this specific day I saw a women carrying 14 ceramic pots on her head, then I saw something that left me speechless: there was one woman with a tiny baby on her back and on top of her head she had an old fashion Singer sewing machine, those that are full metal and super heavy! I couldn't help but think: "If the sewing machine falls, baby dies!" but I guess these women have A LOT of practice and there is a very small chance that anything would fall down!

All women carrying something... the men walking with nothing!

Mmmm... Balancing cane on a bike? I can barely balance myself!

Beautiful tea plantations and people

After less than 2 hours Vishnu and I arrived in Musanze and decided to get off near the exit to the lodge instead of going all the way to town. Once off the bus we decided to go have some lunch so we went across the street to a nice looking cafe but unfortunately they didn't have any food, but they had fresh out of the oven brownies!!!!!! yummm!!!!! I immediately wanted one so I got one and it wasn't all that good, it was more like chocolate cake, less like a brownie! :(

 We then kept moving in order to find a restaurant. The recommendation from the guys from the cafe was too expensive so we went local... another buffet!!!! By then I was tired of buffet so all I ate was french fries and waited for the rain to stop. We then headed to the local market to get some food because the place we were staying at was far away and we just knew food was going to be expensive so we wanted to be prepared and have enough fruit and snacks. After our shopping was done we had to get on boda bodas but the guys outside the market were charging us crazy amounts but we had already discussed how much we wanted to pay with Vishnu so we walked away. One guy literally tried to charge us 3 times the price we were willing to pay.

There are hundreds of boda bodas so most of time is unnecessary to keep asking the same guy to reduce the price so we immediately walked away and I said "we will pay 500" knowing that the price was close enough to what the locals pay. We kept walking and surely two boda bodas came to us about 30 seconds later saying they would take us for that much. On the way down to the lodge my driver asked "how did you know how much to pay?" I completely lied and said "A friend was here before and told me the price" total BS, I just did some math and figured out how much it should be.

After 7km on the boda boda we made it to Red Rocks!




The hostel/ lodge was actually pretty nice; they didn't have a dorm so we decided to bargain for a double room. The original price was $20 per person per night but I had already checked booking.com and they had the double room for $30/night. I talked to the guy and said that we were willing to pay $15 each... with breakfast! We were already there, he had only 2 other guests so he said yes!

 We got a pretty nice small room with shared bathroom with hot water!!! ahhh... heaven!!!










The hostel had its own community shop with Rwandan crafts made by local ladies.



Our time in Musanze was a little wet, with lots of rain but the wifi was so good (actually, the best in all of Rwanda, Uganda, and Tanzania combined) that I took advantage of it and caught up a little bit with blogging, but mostly watched Netflix!

On the first day it rained a lot after we came so Vishnu and I just sat around the lounge area but after the rain it was so beautiful that I said to him "I need to move and walk around, wanna come?" and he did so we both set out to explore the area.
All there was to explore were the villages around so without direction we just started walking, hit the main road and then took a right turn on one of the alleys with a mud path.




The more we walked the greener everything got, the higher we went the farthest we could see. I was very impressed by how as far as our eyes could see there were trees, grass or banana trees.

My favourite part of the walk was seeing a bunch of kids using a tree branch as a swing/ see-saw! hahah They literally were having the best of time!


Sadly as soon as they saw us they stopped as walked up to check us out. We kept walking but on the way back I made Vishnu sit and bounce up and down with a boy that was following us, needless to say.. it was hilarious! I couldn't stop laughing!




As we walked with no direction we encountered a lot of locals that would literally stop and stare! No adult ever said hello, their eyes just opened wide and watched us walk by.



I loved walking by this house hidden in between trees and with a cow munching in the courtyard:






The following day it rained the whole day and by 4pm I said to Vishnu that I needed to go for a walk so out we went. This time we decided to go the opposite way. As we turned left from the alley coming out of the hostel we saw the volcanos right in front of us! Up to then it had been foggy so I had no idea we could see the volcanoes; it was like Kibuye, only better!


We kept walking, being guided by the volcanoes and trying to find the best spots to take pictures but unfortunately the sun was going down and lighting wasn't the best but the views were still very very beautiful.






From our walk we could see at least 4 volcanos, my favourite being the one with many peaks.



Once it got dark we both were very hungry, luckily we found an open bar/ restaurant so we went in. When we entered all we saw were men drinking but we still decided to ask for food and they said they had food and walked us to the back of the restaurant. There was no menu so we asked what they had that was vegetarian and how much; at first the guy said "five thousand francs per plate" Vishnu and I looked at each other and said no way and told him we always pay 1,000 francs for vegetarian food so he said "ok, 1,500 francs" (less than $2) so we said yes and after 40 minutes we had a delicious veggie meal in front of us.


On the third day, after Vishnu left the hostel I decided to go to a viewpoint to get a nice view of the volcanoes. I was a little hesitant about the walk because you never knew when the rain was going to start but since the sun was out I thought it was safe to go. After 40 minutes the sun disappeared and the black clouds came and it started pouring! I put on my rain jacket and got my umbrella out and walked back to the hostel because the was no way I was going to go up a muddy hill!

A couple of hours later the rain stopped so I decided to go back and walk to the nice view point, this time no rain but amazing views!


On the way I found gigantic snails!!!

Muddy paths all the way!

Most of the paths were empty but I found the same annoying kids that i had found earlier. I do not mind the kids that come and say hello, I do mind those who ask for money non stop and try to grab everything from you. I think by then I was a little over the whole Africa thing.

By the time I got to the big hill I knew I had about 15 minutes before I had to get back if I didn't want to walk in the dark. I went up on my own as many locals saw me go up the muddy trail.
One kid, a nice one, stood next to me and asked me to see every single picture that I took, it was really cute! I didn't get to go all the way up but the view from where I stood was pretty nice.



After taking some pictures I hurried back down so I would not walk in the dark. As I walked I started seeing guys carrying huge (and probably very heavy) metal doors. Then I saw a woman carrying another door, and eventually children carrying the window frames.
The villages I walked by have no cars or roads and definitely no access for trucks to transport materials! Everything needed for constructions has to be carried by people, that's hard work!



For now I am done with Africa and so ready for Europe!!!!