Travel Summary: Driving 6h 18m for 98.4 mi
Unfortunately, leaving Bwindi required us to backtrack a noticeable portion of the road we traversed the previous day. Fortunately, however, it was daytime so it wasn’t nearly as bad. And, once we were back on the main road, we immediately took a detour down to Lake Bunyonyi so Sean and I could take a quick swim. I was delighted as I assumed no swims would happen due to the prevalence of Bilharzia/Schistosomiasis, a parasitic disease from infected water that can result in serious damage to the internal organs. Fortunately, Lake Bonyonyi doesn’t have any so we went swimming. 🙂
With that out of the way, it was time to head to Rwanda. On the way, Sean pointed out the rock splitting. Large road construction rocks are deposited on the side of the road and then workers are hired to split them into smaller sizes with a small hammer. Wow! Can you imagine?
The drive through the mountains in South Eastern Uganda is spectacular. In spite of the steep, mountainous terrain, it seems like the farms are densely packed together and all arable land is farmed.
It wasn’t long before we reached the border. A couple of things to note, however. Firstly, there is a time change between Uganda and Rwanda, so make sure you pay attention to which way you are traveling and whether the time change gives you an extra hour or subtracts an hour when crossing. Secondly, Rwanda drives on the right side of the road, whereas in Uganda we drove on the left-hand side – so pay attention to when you turn.
For our first night in Rwanda, we took a boat across Lake Ruhondo to our accommodations on a peninsula unreachable by land (we tried).