Mbarara – Hotel Kash

I’m so sorry for suddenly inundating you with updates but because our bus to Kigali yesterday, that should have arrived at 7am, that we were informed at 4.15am wouldn’t come until 8am had broken down, it didn’t arrive to us until midday. We therefore had quite a bit of time on our hands. I’ll hand you over to Rob to explain the pleasures of our one night in Mbarara and our bus journey to Kigali. Don’t forget the border crossing or the crazy taxi driver Rob.

We had to leave Rwamwanja a day early to get the overnight bus from Mbarara – or so we thought??

Our loyal taxi driver Loy took us on the 4 hour journey. The first hour of which was along the usual dusty, bumpy, hole/rut ridden road (??) closely avoiding our fellow road users consisting of children going to school, adults, cows, goats, the occasional stray dog, pigs, bodas (scooters), and push bikes. All of us seeking a reasonably smooth piece of road. (I will stop my complaints in the UK regarding our roads).

Considering the potential risks involved with all these different road users we didn’t see many accidents. I am quite a calm passenger and even I had to close my eyes at times to some of the manoeuvres Loy was doing.

After our first hour we then hit tarmac all the way to Mbarara which was a welcome change.

Mbarara was the first large town we had visited since Kampala and proved to be just as a manic as we got there during rush hour (terrific).

We first had to find what we thought was the bus station. We needed to find this to ensure we had our tickets for the following days journey to Rwanda. We went up and down a series of roads until in discussion with Loy we realised that we needed to find a petrol station that served as the bus depot. Eventually we found the petrol station that had a tiny booth where we got our tickets -next task to find a hotel.

We visited one hotel and as I waited with the car Emma checked it out. She came out and with a shake of her head I knew that it was bad. We then went next door to the Hotel Kash. We were taken around the back of the building which looked a bit dodgy but certainly no worse than Rwanwanja Country Retreat (RCR) – I still laugh at this name which sounds idyllic and lovely ??

Any way by comparison Hotal Kask had WiFi, electric when we wanted it, hot water – pure luxury!

We dumped our bags and headed downstairs for our evening meal. My highlight of which was cold beer, something else that wasn’t available for the last few weeks.

We then went to bed. We woke in the early hours as we didn’t realise that we had a nightclub next door. The music went on till getting onto 6am. This wouldn’t have been too bad if it wasn’t for the locals leaving the club around 5:30 followed by someone carrying out what sounded like DIY at that time as well. Added to that we got a call from the bus company at 4:30 to tell us that the bus was arriving at 8 am not 7 as we were first told. Just as thought we had a bit of rest bite at around 6am a car alarm went off! All in all a great night sleep!

After breakfast we made our way to our bus collection stop. We got there to be told the bus had made its way out of Kampala and then had to return so wouldn’t arrive until 12pm. TERRIFIC- only 4 hours to kill. We went for a walk around the nearby golf course and then true to form in Uganda it chucked it down. We ran into the nearest cafe and stayed there pretty much until the bus arrived.

The bus- we had booked first class seats? The bus was pretty much bashed on every panel. I did laugh when I looked at the drivers dash to see that it had been completely burnt out some time ago. Burnt plastic everywhere- bit of a worry.

The journey would take about 3 hours to the border of Rwanda. My seat proved to be interesting as it had a habit of dropping back on its own and me ending up on the lap of the person behind. I made my best excuses and apologies as I could.

Eventually we got to the border. This proved to be one of the most stressful times of the trip. We were given no notification as to what to do here. Everyone got off and we followed and queued assuming we were getting our visas – nope, just a stamp that we were leaving Uganda, our first mistake. We got our passport stamps then looked up to see no bus- oh dear we thought (or words to that effect!).

Nervously we walked in the direction of Rwanda where we hoped our bus would be passing by a health check station that gave us the all clear. Beyond this we eventually found our bus with all the luggage removed. We queried this and were told it all needed checking and we needed to get a visa. We then queued for a while at visa desk. Got to the front and were told wrong desk. Went to another desk and eventually got our visa. Were then told we needed to pay at another desk. Bearing in mind we had come from Uganda and had just entered Rwanda the obvious currency for visa payment would be US dollars right? WTF! Another queue to the fedex to change our shillings to dollars. Meanwhile Emma took over queuing for our 4 bags to be emptied and checked before going back on the bus. Once we had the dollars we then had to return to our first queue to get our visa which by now had stretched to some length. We had been queuing for some time when the bus attendant grabbed our passports# and visa info and barged his way to the front of the queue as the bus had to go. This went down well with the others in the queue but by then I’d had enough anyway. Visas were then stamped and we were frogmarched to the bus and onto Rwanda. Whole saga was absolute African chaos (that typically we should be used to now!).

We then made our way to Kigali (capital city of Rwanda) in our executive coach !!

When we arrived we were pretty much man handled off the bus as we gathered our luggage and I was approached by a local taxi driver who we agreed a rare to take us to our hotel.

The drive proved to be one of the worst o& our trip. The guy was a nutter. No right of way. No clearance for bikes or pedestrians (we nearly took 2 out on a pedestrian crossing). With relief we eventually got to our hotel and went to dinner straight away.

Elevate suites and Kigali is the next blog…….