I’m Like Henry, just Slower and More Scared

After yesterday’s ordeal on the roads getting to the lodge, I was feeling a little nervous about getting on a bike. I’m not a mountain biker – I ride a used Schwinn around very flat Minnesota. And I’m not an adrenaline junky. And I have fragile bones. So, bombing down rocky paths and bouncing off trees isn’t high on my todo list.

But, the bike rental was already arranged, and I went to the trouble of packing bike shorts.

After breakfast, I got on the bike and set out towards the Congo-Nile trail. The Congo-Nile trail is a ~140mile trail for hiking and biking along the coast of Lake Kivu. It’s part of the government efforts to develop tourism activities beyond gorilla watching.

The start of the ride involved climbing back up the road I’d driven down yesterday. About 500 feet of climbing over a very short distance, which had me huffing and puffing. Oh also, we’re about a mile above sea level. Once I got to the trail though, it was mostly more manageable. The trail mostly weaves together existing paths and roads – I don’t think any new trails were constructed, but there is signage. It passes through small villages and lots of small farm plots.

I rode for about an hour, climbing higher then dropping all the way down to the lake level. Along the way, lots of people were waving and giving smiles, or giving quizzical looks. When I gave gestures of “oh dear god it’s steep and I’m dying,” I got knowing thumbs up and smiles in reply.

About 5 miles in, I decided to turn back. I’d descended all the way to the lake, which meant climbing quite a ways back. And I hadn’t brought food, an extra phone battery, or a ton of water, so I didn’t want to end up in a bad situation. The return involved some climbing I couldn’t manage on the bike – I shamefully had to walk. I’m sure an experienced mountain biker would have been fine, but I get nervous when the front wheel is spending more time off the ground than on.

After my ride, I read and drank coffee while waiting on lunch. After lunch, I hiked over to the Kinunu Coffee Washing Station for a tour. Much of Rwanda is ideally suited to growing coffee, and there are a handful of these processing stations around the country. The Kinunu station was built about 20 years ago, and takes raw coffee cherries from farmers and can produce a fully finished produce (roasted, bagged beans, and even ground beans), as well as a variety of intermediary products for different industries.

I had a private tour with a lovely guy who’s been working at the washing station for about six years. As a brief aside, he asked where I was from and I told him. He then explained that when he fled to the DRC as a kid after his parents were murdered in the genocide, he thought he really wanted to go to the US or Europe someday. But eventually he found a community in Rwanda and is living a happy life. The level of trauma experienced by everyone over 30 in this country is unreal.

Anyways, the tour was fantastic – he really knew his stuff. The washing station also grows coffee tree seedlings for local farmers, and I saw some of them growing in their nursery. During the busiest harvest seasons, the station can employ more than 200 people from the local villages. The station is built into the hillside, so uses gravity for much of the process, as beans move through various stages of sorting, cleaning, husking, fermenting, etc.

We did a mini-tasting after the tour, and I’ve got to say – even as a coffee snob, they’re making lovey coffee. I’ve done “coffee tours” in other countries, but never one with someone so knowledgable and able to provide an in-depth explanation. I also loved seeing the machinery from all around the work – a Turkish coffee roaster, a Brazilian bean separator, a Kenworth curling iron to seal the bags…

After my hike back from the coffee station, I settled in for work. There are some new arrivals at the lodge – six Belgian men who are biking the full Congo Nile trail over the next week, as well as a Belgian couple on a vacation in Rwanda. So, dinner involved nine people speaking Dutch (Philippe as well), and me sitting oblivious. It was like hanging out with the Hedgies.