Day Three: Sunday, 1st May
We woke in our hotel to heavenly singing from the local church. Sunday is ‘non car day’ in Kigali and everyone is expected to take some exercise. This meant that the cars that were going to take us to our site accommodation couldn’t get through, which was lucky as it gave time for Justin’s fantastic bomber jacket/shorts combo to arrive hot from the market. Phew! The cars arrived and we met our B2P liaison and set off for the supermarket and to change money.
With our trolleys full of the recommended ‘sugary snacks’ to see us through the long site days, we set off through a tropical rain storm. The roads quickly turned into ochre rivers and we slid our way for about 45 mins into the hilly outskirts of Kigali. We reached our site accommodation for the fortnight, located about 15 mins away from the bridge site. We soon began attracting attention from the locals. Our B2P liaison taught us a few Rwandan phrases, which soon had the locals laughing hysterically at our attempts. After a quick unpack and lunch (delicious) we headed to site.
Thankfully it had stopped pouring and with more slipping and sliding we headed over a few hills to our site. The site for the trail bridge is a ravine about 20m wide by about 10m deep surrounded by banana groves and will serve a local population of about 4500, most of which seemed to have turned out for our arrival. With yellow billed kites swirling overhead we headed home to plan the next days work schedule.
