We are (finally) running out of our we-took-a-bus-in-Africa-and-you-won’t-believe-how-weird-it-was stories. (Relieved? Us too.) But first, here’s possibly the strangest one of them all:
From Gisenyi, we backtracked to Kigali to overnight in the capital before catching a morning bus up to Kampala, Uganda. We boarded a bus in Gisenyi at 6:00 p.m. for the three-to-four hour journey to Kigali.1 The trip was progressing fairly smoothly until, well after nightfall and not far from Kigali, one of the passengers had something of a mental breakdown. He attempted to disembark from the bus while it was in motion, and other passengers had to restrain him to stop him from falling out onto the road. When the bus driver stopped the bus, he leapt off and ran into the darkened woods. The other passengers began looking for him, and, when he was finally located, he refused to get back on the bus. There was a great deal of animated discussion amongst everyone about how to proceed before our bus driver eventually left him in the care of some other people along the side of the road.
We continued to Kigali in a sort of stunned silence. Once in Kigali, we encountered a standard police checkpoint on our way to the bus station. We filed out so that the police could inspect our bags, and someone told the police officer about what had happened with our fellow passenger. The police officer then had us get back on the bus, boarded the bus, and directed us to a nearby police station. There was some discussion, and then we all got back onto the bus to drive to one of the larger, central police station in Kigali, where the police began to take statements from some of the other passengers. It was almost eleven o’clock before we reached our guesthouse.
Luckily, our bus ride the following day on the Jaguar Executive Coach was drama-free. The bus had comfortable 2×2 seating and wifi(!) – although the latter only worked once we crossed into Uganda, and even at that it was pretty intermittent. Perhaps even more notably, the bus stopped only twice over its 12-hour journey: once at the border and once for a restroom/snack stop. Our seats were in the very front row of the bus, which afforded us an excellent amount of leg room as well as a clear view of the road ahead.2 We were surprised at the extremely poor condition of the roads in Uganda – it was like we were traveling on a one-lane road with eroded edges rather than a purported two-lane highway.
Kampala itself was sprawling and semi-chaotic, but there seemed to be an order to its chaos. For example, the taxi park, which appears to be a dizzying sea of minibuses, is actually quite orderly. While we, as non-residents of Kampala, always had to ask where to find the appropriate minibus for our destination, people were friendly and usually able to tell us precisely where to go.
We found the minibus taxis3 very helpful in getting around Kampala – especially since the drivers of the moto taxis (called boda bodas in Uganda) aren’t required to provide a helmet for passengers as they are in Rwanda.
One afternoon, we used the shared taxis to visit the Kasubi Tombs, a UNESCO World Heritage Site located in Kampala. The site was originally a royal enclosure, and now is the final resting place of the former kings, as well as an active religious site and the home of certain royal descendants.
Unfortunately, the largest structure at the Kasubi Tombs was destroyed by arson in 2010. Restoration work is being done at the site. Even though the central focus of the complex was destroyed, we found the tour to be very interesting. Our guide was very informative, and we learned a lot of about the history of Uganda.4
We also managed to take in some creature comforts while in Kampala: specifically, dinner and a movie at a posh mall. We spent an afternoon and early evening having a leisurely drink and dinner at Cafesserie in the new Acacia Mall, and then took in the 3D version of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. The movie let out after midnight, so we had to take boda boda back to our hotel – we both climbed on the back of one motorbike, and our driver drove so slowly (his motorbike barely chugging up a hill) that we didn’t worry about not having helmets.
While in Kampala, one of our goals was to stock up on U.S. Dollars. At this point in our trip, we were planning to visit Sudan (spoiler: we did not end up going to Sudan), and we knew we would need to bring in all the cash that we intended to spend there – a frustrating situation as we generally prefer to pay for things by pulling out reasonable amounts in local currency from ATMs every few days. We also knew that it was nearly impossible to exchange the local currency for U.S. Dollars in Ethiopia (our next stop after Uganda), so we needed to obtain them while in Uganda. Thus we began a campaign to pull out millions of Ugandan Shillings, emptying various ATMs across Kampala during our stockpiling. Our last day in Kampala, we headed downtown with over five million Ugandan Shillings, which we then exchanged for USD$2,000 with minimal fanfare at the forex bureau at the Grand Imperial Hotel, which lived up to its reputation for having great rates. Marc even managed to negotiate a further discounted rate, a hilarious thing that one would not even try in other parts of the world, so we only ended up losing a couple of dollars on the entire transaction. 5
Where We Stayed:
☆ Mubwiza Court, Kigali. Four goats. We were here only briefly – due to shenanigans described above, we arrived after 11:00 p.m., and we had to leave by 6:30 a.m. for our bus to Kampala. Rose, who runs the place, was an absolute doll and gave us hugs when we left.
☆ Banda Inns, Kampala. Five goats. This place was great: comfortable, free wifi, free laundry, delicious breakfast, and dogs!
Where We Ate:
☆ Fuego. Within walking distance of our hotel, we had pizza here two nights. The pizza was delicious (we could see the pizza oven from our seats!), and we enjoyed sitting outside in the comfortable courtyard.
☆ 1000 Cups of Coffee. We had a relaxing lunch here – all lunches come with a free cup of coffee!
☆ Cafesserie. Delicious food and great ambiance, although you pay for what you get. In particular, the bread and hummus was amazing, and I had a delicious salad.
1 Six o’clock is pretty late to be starting such a journey, but due to it being a Friday afternoon and Rwanda’s (totally reasonable) one-passenger-per-seat rule, when we arrived at the bus station just before 3:30 p.m., the earliest bus we could purchase tickets for was leaving until 6:00 p.m.
2 We had booked our tickets days earlier, before leaving Kigali to head out to Lake Kivu, which gave us our pick from the seating map.
3 Somewhat confusingly to us, shared minibuses in Uganda are simply referred to as “taxis” with individually hailed passenger sedans – vehicles that we would generally associate with the word “taxi” – being called “special hires.”
4 Guides are compulsory and charge a fee in addition to the entrance fee. This price scheme seemed a little confusing to us at first – but we found that our guide was worth the extra money.
5 Note to potential thieves: we are no longer carrying around all of this cash! It has long since been spent along the way on other things.
