Distance: 86.9 km
Ride time: 4:46:51
Average: 18.2 km/h
Max speed: 50.0 km/h
Total: 49994 km
Do you see the difference in the photo below and every other photo I have uploaded from Africa? Yes, the road is super clean with no garbage around at all! This is indeed how every road look like in Rwanda – almost cleaner than back home.
And it’s not only the roads that are clean – in fact the whole country seems to be so well organized that you hardly believe you are in Africa anymore. Talk about an amazing transformation in the last twenty years following the horrible genocide in 1994.
I was cycling up and over a good number of the thousand hills of Rwanda on my way to the capital Kigali. The last time I was in a city of any kind of size was in Lusaka in Zambia. For me Africa has certainly been a very rural experience, but here in Kigali I was reunited with civilization. Shopping mall and supermarkets once again dominated the landscape, and I could even have a burger for lunch.
If you eat at local restaurants food in Rwanda is cheap enough, but if you go to a modern supermarket the imported products get seriously expensive. 12500 francs is 17 dollars for a Kellogg’s packet which I think is pretty steep.
Despite the rising prices I certainly enjoyed being in civilization – including a bit of socializing back at the hostel. It seemed like most guests were young people doing volunteering work out in the country side and then spending the weekend in Kigali. There was also a couple of Germans who volunteered in Kampala and a Canadian couple who just finished their stint in Tanzania. African hostels are certainly different from your typical party hostel in Asia or South America.
On my rest day I managed a walk around town and quite a bit of work on the blog – something I haven’t got the chance to do a lot of lately.
Tomorrow I will hit 50.000 km!
