We went this weekend up north to Musanze to go hiking for the weekend, and while we're a bit stiff now, the trip was incredible. Mount Bisoke (Visoke depending on the spelling) is one of the Volcanos in Volcano National Parc and the one with a crater lake at the top. It took a fair bit of time to get our passes in Kigali as they were having problems with my ID. I am a resident student here in Rwanda, which it says on my residency card (my official ID here), but they wanted to see my passport to see that it said "student" on my visa. This was difficult as 1) I had not brought my visa with me, and 2) it does not say student on my visa because they don't print visas that say student on them. Of the three of us here on that grant you all know about, *none* of us has a visa that says student. It seems the visa office "offers" them but doesn't know what that really means. After talking with the manager, and enlisting the diplomatic help of an ICRC friend of mine, we finally convinced then that the official resident ID issued by the Rwandan government that declared me a student was, in fact, sufficient to establish that I was both a resident and a student.
So off we went. We spent the night before at a hotel up in Musanze where I always forget how cold it actually gets. The elevation is quite high, which has a big effect upon the weather at night. The blankets are actually needed up there. The next morning bright and early we headed out for the hike, and after traversing some unbelievably bumpy roads in the 4x4, we arrived to begin the hike. It was AWESOME! Starting out through fields at about 2500m, traveling through lush vegetation for a long time and then eventually into more of a tropical alpine grassland. Near the top was only one kind of tree, that had these huge pillars emerging from them (a flower of some sort I think), and then the grassland. The hike was also incredibly muddy and slippery - thank heavens it wasn't raining!
When we finally made it to the top at 3711m (12,175ft), the view was spectacular. This was also now officially the highest I have ever been while still firmly planted on Earth, though still less than half of Everest. :-) The crater lake was really beautiful, and when the clouds cleared you could see all the way down to Musanze, the farmlands around, and the other volcanos in the chain. The lake itself is off-limits to swimming, probably partly because it is really quite cold at the top. I'm also guessing the lake is rather toxic, probably huge amounts of sulfur in it. The swirling clouds that rush up over the side of the mountain and then swirl around the crater were an amazing sight to behold. It was like there was a cloud vortex over the crater lake that would just disappear. It was pretty incredible to lay down on the grass on the ridge and watch the clouds rush over the crest. And then they would just all be gone and it would be crystal clear again. Stunning.
I had a great time on the way up and the way down. Parts of the way down were more like a slip and slide - just keep moving, just keep moving and you wont fall. Also, stinging nettles SUCK and hurt like a bitch when you touch them. The spines all have some kind of poison in them that stings like crazy. I fell into one on the way down rather directly and it started swelling up like crazy, which doesn't appear to be a standard reaction. Luckily I had epipens and benadryl with me (as always) and after a benadryl everything was fine again. Something to look out for in the future!
The altitude surprisingly didn't bother me at all - I'm going to chalk it up to my abundant red blood cells. :-) A few in our group were having some real problems getting super tired and then short of breath, one finally had to be supported the last bit back to the car. But we all made it up and down, and even back to Kigali before the ICRC curfew! I really love hiking, always have. I guess this is what happens when you begin hiking while still being carried on someone's back! With my ease of scrambling over rocks, my friends decided that I was perhaps not so much human, but part mountain goat! Danish calves baby, and a lifetime of err... "not" playing on the rock cliffs behind Eagles Nest at Scout Camp when I was a kid. Because we certainly never broke any of the rules at Scout Camp... Um...
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