UP in the heart of Africa is an area with some of the most beautiful lakes on the continent, the most interesting mountains, the greenest valleys and the most spectacular landscapes. It can for good reason be called a "tropical Switzerland".
However, it was one of the last regions in Africa that explorers visited almost a hundred years ago, and even today it is not one of the most important tourist circles. This is not surprising, as this fascinating country is located at least 600 miles from the sea and is surrounded by dense tropical vegetation, swamps and disease-infected areas. But the few who venture beyond these natural obstacles will be richly rewarded. Here you will find the tallest and shortest people in all of Africa. There you will find rich wildlife and an abundance of plants. You will see fiery volcanoes and hot springs. And as a living reminder of Switzerland, you will see snow-capped peaks as high as the Matterhorn, beautiful waterfalls, vast lakes, lush valleys and picturesque villages that seem to float on steep slopes.
This hidden "Switzerland" includes the southern part of Uganda, the countries of Rwanda and Burundi and the neighboring part of the province of Kivu in eastern Congo DR.
Our journey begins
We must warn that traveling through this region is not easy today. Wherever you turn, expect a slow and uneven ride.
The first stop on our exciting journey is from Kabale to Kisoro. The bus is old, crowded with more than sixty passengers and has even more weight on the roof: bicycles, furniture, boxes of all kinds, bundles and bags with food and live animals.
The bus is finally loaded and we are off! We pass some villages and as we continue along the winding road, the air becomes colder and less humid at high altitudes. In time we can see Lake Bunyoni, a pearl, so to speak, or perhaps the end of a fjord, but under the tropical sun and the lush vegetation surrounded by a curved shoreline with a beautiful island in the center. We climbed higher and higher, with better and better visibility, now marked by the red African torches on the mountainside. In the opposite direction there is a wide view of the deep valleys below, with their cultivated slopes and their villages hung to the sides. We stop here and there to free a person or two, each with their own things - bags, bottles, chickens, baskets, feces, bowls or whatever - carried from the roof of the bus.
But check! To the left is the town of Kabale. That was our starting point! After almost five hours of talking through the mountains and traveling almost fifty miles on this winding mountain road, we are only ten miles from Cabal when the bird flies. Fantastic!
Now we walk through a bamboo forest so dense that the road seems to be in a tunnel and suddenly we have a fantastic view, the famous Kanaba Gap. Now we can see the Virunga volcanoes that span three countries: Uganda, Rwanda and Zaire. On the slopes of the nearest volcano is one of the last houses of the wild gorilla.
In Rwanda
In this relatively easy "land of a thousand hills", traveling may seem quieter, but still very picturesque. Head and shoulders above the rest is Karisimbi, at 14,786 feet (about 4,500 meters) the highest volcano in the Virunga region. To the south is Ruhengeri, surrounded by extensive banana plantations. Here we see very beautiful lava stone houses, between which mortar is painted white. Here are also Bulera Lake and Ruhondo Lake, reminiscent of the beautiful Lake Bunyoni.
It is an agricultural country. All suitable soils appear to be used for growing coffee, potatoes, maize, beans, peanuts, maize, cassava and other crops, sometimes at 45 degree angles on the slopes. Here and there we pass brick factories with their typical kilns, in which various gray, yellow and red bricks are made.
But we'll be back soon, and we'll be over 2100 meters away. For many kilometers we seem to be driving on top of the mountains. The equatorial sun on the playing field gives the different shades of green an extra sparkle. There are many trees mixed with eucalyptus, and in the latter they tied baskets of reeds to give the bees a home.
Someone on the bus says that we are approaching the capital Kigali. In this case, after going about eighty miles of dirt road in four and a half hours, we didn't damage that part of the trip, and this morning we added another twenty-five miles.
One thing we noticed in the last hundred kilometers is that we don't see any big city, just one or two small ones with up to ten houses each. However, we are reminded that this is typical of Rwanda, a small country of four million inhabitants and a population density comparable to that of Europe. However, most people live in single-family homes scattered across the country. However, when we walked past a market, we quickly realized how many people there were.
And what an incredible number of people! Some are six feet tall per Watusi and many are very small. No, they are not Batwa pygmies because they live in the mountains some distance from here. But whether they are long or short, hardly anyone wears shoes, there are only about seven in a hundred people.
We have to leave. In front of us, there are still 90 km of winding roads leading to the southwest of Rwanda.
The birthplace of the Nile
We are now continuously climbing in a large forest. The people, the houses and the fields are gone. It is a primeval forest with abundant tropical vegetation: flowering trees, shiny silver leaves, ferns along the paths. After a little over an hour of climbing, we wonder if we can reach the end of the forest. Others on the bus guarantee that we will get closer to the center!
If we continue to climb, we will reach a height of about 2400 meters - and with this height the mountainous vegetation, yellow, green, red and brown, hangs on the branches. A small sign on the left, slightly pale and almost sloping towards the land, indicates that the narrow stream we cross leads to a source of the Akagera River, a main body of water on the Nile for 6,600 kilometers of the Mediterranean .
Beautiful lake Kivu
Finally we go down and in the distance, under the setting sun, the beautiful lake Kivu appears, a gem in the Western Rift Valley, with the city of Bukavu at the southern end. Here, to greet our eyes, are the pyrethrum fields with their violet flowers, tea, coffee, sugar cane, cinchona plantations and steep cliffs that slide towards the sky, sometimes a mile beyond the lake. Ankole cattle with their huge horns, which we had already admired in Kurezi, are also found here in Zaire. You try to find enough green grass on the mountainside, between the bright reds of the burning trees and the yellow of the box.
The view is constantly changing: an opening in the blue lake reveals its peninsulas or its rugged coastline or the islands scattered on its surface. In another direction, deep alpine valleys emerge and here and there you can see waterfalls in the middle of the mountain.
There are other sections where we cross banana plantations in kilometers. We see many women carrying large pumpkins in baskets on their backs and holding them with a ribbon over their foreheads. The smell of alcohol is in the air because the pumps contain banana beer on the way to the market.
The northern shore of the lake offers a different landscape: miles of hard black lava that stretches from the volcano Nyamlagira to the lake less than thirty years old. The uneven surface begins to be covered with vegetation. Then we see Nyiragongo, a second active volcano that touches the clouds. At night, its tip can be seen in light red. During our trip we can not wait to see Mount Virunga again, this time in Zaire. It's hard to believe that these peaks are as high as the famous Matterhorn.
Virunga Park
We leave the volcanic chain and continue the journey. Soon we will see another wonderful landscape: a plain full of antelopes, elephants and other animal species that graze peacefully in its sanctuary. The word that comes to mind is "paradise". Palm-rivered rivers meander north to the Nile, and hundreds of hippos are scattered along its shores and flat edges. Another silver lake glows in the distance.
As you drive south from Bukavu, the high clouds behind us must hide Ruwenzori, the "mountain of the moon", which can reach 5,100 meters.
We went down the Rusizi Rift Valley and looked at Burundi on the left. It seems to have many similarities with Rwanda, apart from the cotton plantations we noticed as we approached Lake Tanganyika.
What a beautiful lake, flanked by mountain ranges on both sides! The famous explorers Livingstone and Stanley are said to have glimpsed Africa's "hidden Switzerland" here more than a hundred years ago. But they could not know everything about it. Surely all these bumpy and winding roads through these mountains contain many surprises that will pique your interest. But it would take years to explore them all.
Right now, beautiful people are standing on the pier waving "Kwa heri!", Which means "goodbye" in Swahili, as our boat slowly moves south of Lake Tanganyika. We just have to save the precious memories from our trip to this place of beauty, this "hidden Switzerland" in the heart of Africa.
Visited this country once it’s beautiful