This trek is one of our two examples of what is possible on the otherwise 11-day Congo Nile Trail. See also: 1-Day Kivu Beach Stroll.
Rwanda rewards the curious. Immerse yourself in its culture, pack your days with Congo Nile Trail experiences worth writing home about, and sample local kitchens where the food is as honest as the welcome.
Highlights
- experience Rwandan daily life as it exists nowhere else
- try the best coffee tour on the Trail
- meet the ladies who connect fishing markets to other settlements
- learn about traditional and modern beekeeping
- enjoy lunch at Mama Nelly’s local kitchen
- chat with a traditional healer
- gaze at the international business of sand
- sleep at the most picturesque beach of the Trail
Facts
duration: 2 days; difficulty: moderate
starting point: Kinunu or Rubavu/Gisenyi
distance: 33km/20mi
departures: daily at 8am
price per person:
8+ people: USD 240
6–7 people: USD 270
4–5 people: USD 300
2–3 people: USD 375
1 person: USD 580
included: guiding, two nights of guesthouse accommodation, meals, snacks, water, all activities, tips and contributions
not included: transport to/from Kinunu/Gisenyi
You are reading one of the seven multi-day trek itineraries covering Rwanda and Uganda. Click for an overview of these treks or check out our day experiences.
Day 1 (Kinunu — Cyimbili)
The Kinunu area is beautiful and offers plenty of places to stay; for your pre-trekking night we will put you up at a friendly guesthouse with the best coffee tour on the Congo Nile Trail.
Your day starts with a filling breakfast built around the fresh fruit of Kinunu — the mangoes, avocados, pineapples and guavas are superb — along with milk straight from the cows and other local goodies. The first two hours of walking take you through gentle hills and valleys to the village of Rugamba, where beekeepers will show you their craft.
15 minutes on, bananas and other produce are being loaded onto boats bound for the markets of Gisenyi. At the nearby Rugamba river, barges are filled with sand that will go into local construction or travel to the cement factories on the southern tip of Lake Kivu.
The only way to reach the other side is to take off your shoes and have a little adventure! The water cools you down and is perfectly safe; nothing will hitch a ride on your legs.
What follows is a stretch of beaches and bushes, a lovely section where you feel yourself becoming part of nature. An hour and a half on, villagers may be drying fish on the sand, or beans, soya, cassava and other seasonal crops.
At Maziba market fishermen and women traders meet, sending the fruits of Lake Kivu deeper into the mainland. A couple of hills later comes Nkora market, which is intriguingly international: Congolese traders arrive with bananas and coffee and go home with animals. Nkora is also home to Mama Nelly, our star of the day! She will cook you an excellent lunch.
The final item on the day’s programme is a traditional healer in the village of Cyimbili, about one flat hour further, who shows how herbs from the hills are used against nearly any sickness. Forget the medicine man of the movies: this is a rural professional, regulated and licensed as all such practitioners are in Rwanda.
You sleep at Cyimbili Guesthouse, a historic spot set behind the grounds of the secondary school it helps finance. This place is a bit run-down yet has the prettiest beach on the whole Congo Nile Trail. The rooms are basic but dinner comes with a lake view. Perhaps your sweet lullaby will be the singing of the students?
Day 2 (Cyimbili — Gisenyi)
The second day opens with a hearty breakfast and a crossing of the Cyimbili river, then on to the health centre and primary school and through the coffee plantation. We ease you into the walk with 2 to 3 hours along the lakeshore, where fishermen are hauling in the results of a night of work. Only 15 minutes of soft climbing interrupts the flat; nothing in Rwanda ever stays level for long.
After that the walk turns into an up-and-down affair through banana plantations, past villages where people sell their crops, mind their small shops and get on with other modest businesses.
Late in the day comes the first industrial landmark: a modern methane gas power station, which you will admire from the hill above. Not long after, you reach the Bralirwa brewery, the first factory ever built in Rwanda, back in 1959. Before it arrived Gisenyi was a quiet residential corner of colonial times; the brewery is what helped turn it into the busy city that now welcomes you.
You arrive in Gisenyi on your own two feet, having earned every one of the slopes behind you. A cold Primus beer tastes rather different when you have just walked past the place it was made; a bitter lemon Krest does the job just as well.
photos by Cesar Niyonkuru, Enock Musabyimana and Miha Logar
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