Climbing the Muhavura volcano

Everything creaks. That’s the first thought in my head this morning. I can’t make a move, take a breath without it.

Yesterday [Editor's Note: no, not actually yesterday] we hiked the Muhavura volcano. It’s featured prominently in a few of the photos I’ve posted -- the tallest of the three large peaks behind my house.

These two fit Brits, Tommy and Andy, hiked Muhavura a few weeks ago. “Sure it’s a proper hike," they said. "Cost you four hours up, two on the go down.”

No prob, six hours.

The New Math: I was talking about hiking the volcano with one of the med students and the others who wanted to come along (total = 5 people). And then it got mentioned to a few of the translators (=8 people), who each wanted to bring a friend or partner (= 12 people). Oh, and then the three Scottish med students wanted to come. Grand total = 15 people. How did this happen?

At 6am I was at the hospital. Jen and Will and Ro were there, but Michal was sick. None of the Ugandans arrived. The Scots showed up. By 6:30 everyone but Maureen was there, so we drove and picked her up.

We arrived at the site about 7:15, walked ten minutes to base camp. A skinny young man in a military uniform was tasked with collecting our fees. His face was so smooth, you would swear stubble had never sullied it.

This took far too long. We each got jacked for fifty bucks, and the Ugandans were supposed to be free, but this went back and forth. The “official” price was 30k shillings, but someone had been to an office yesterday and got permission blah blah blah. We paid them 5k shillings for each Ugandan and took off hiking.

As usual, the Ugandan mountain guides have to give you a little speech to assert their authority. This speech tells you exactly what you already know: “The activity we are to engage in today,” said George haltingly, “is mountain hiking. Muhavura is four hundred thousand meters --- is four thousand one hundred meters above the sea.”

I knew our guide George for only one day, but the expression I heard him say more than any other was “We try again?” This was, you can guess, while we were sitting, drinking water or eating. I would reply with something like “Again? We just tried five minutes ago,” which got me a perplexed and hostile stare.

Five minutes into the hike, some higher-up in the UGA (ugandan wildlife authority) walkie-talkied George, and he sadly informed us that the Ugandans would have to pay the full fee. Everyone was incensed, but actually some of them were already feeling tired and they said Eff It we’re going home. We tried to argue with them, but since we didn’t actually have the cash to cover them it was all academic. The group was halved.

The terrain was beautiful and varied. Often it was very desert-like. The open slopes were covered with thick-leaved hardy fir bushes, or squat broad-spined plants resembling yucca. Then the trail would duck into a vertical fold in the mountain, a section where strands of cloud get caught, and it would suddenly be a rainforest, leaves dripping, tree trunks heavy with dark green shag. From every branch hung strands of pale green wisp moss, nature’s tinsel, with tiny drops of moisture in the lattice like flies in a web.

There’s nothing to be written about the walk itself, except that it was effing brutal. One foot after another. I’m a big fan of the walking stick after my time in Uganda.

They laid down bamboo where the walking was difficult. These were basically -- no, they were exactly -- bamboo ladders laid on the ground. You stepped on the rungs to get through a muddy patch.

I could be imagining this, but it seemed like as the hike progressed, the ladders increased in both length and degree of difficulty. They started out semi-necessary --- your shoes would get wet without the ladder. But then they started running the ladders across dips in the trail, so that if your foot slipped off the rung you were looking at a six-inch drop. Then it was an 18-inch drop, and then two feet. And the number of rungs went from four to six to ten. And then they started laying two ladders sequentially, so you’re teetering on these rungs for the better part of a minute.

And this is where the walking stick came in handy. I became a big fan of the walking stick yesterday. When you’re on a smooth flat trail the stick doesn’t add much, but when you’re losing your balance on a wet strip of bamboo stretched over a ravine, it’s nice to have an eight-foot appendage.

Half our group didn’t take walking sticks. George definitely did not make clear how helpful they would be. “Here are walking sticks if you want,” he nodded as he walked past the base camp hut. I almost didn’t take one, but I saw that George had a walking stick, and so did the guy carrying the rifle.

Did I not mention the guy with the rifle yet? Actually there were two. They came along to protect us from wild animals, buffalo apparently being the most common. George --- I could tell from his defensive tone that he’s been exposed to hand-wringing liberals like myself before --- assured us that the guns would be fired in the air only.

The hike destroyed us. One person got a severe leg cramp and had to stop. Another person got altitude sickness and started vomiting. Five people made it all the way to the top. (Plus George, who did I mention is about fifty years old? He wasn’t even breathing hard.)

Muhavura and the other two volcanoes are shared by the three countries: Uganda, Rwanda, and DR Congo. Our route led us up the Uganda-Rwanda border. Per standard tourist protocol and George’s suggestion, we got a photo of ourselves with one foot in each country.

We came to the summit and found a small crater pond. It was pristine, completely still, hiding in a slight hollow like the indentation a cherry makes on top of a sundae.

I walked to edge and saw ... algae. The dark water was filled with green growing things, slippery brown rocks, goo.

But Jamie (one of the Scottish med students, who is actually from Ireland originally) was committed to going in the water. And I was blazing hot by this point, so it didn’t take much convincing. We stripped to our skivvies (skivvies? Ach, do you see what spending twelve hours with Scots does?) and waited for Jen to get her camera ready. Then we counted off and jumped.

It was close to the coldest water I’ve ever been in. My chest tightened up, I couldn’t breathe. I tried to swim to the other side, and made it about halfway before turning around and giving up. The cold was like a vice grip on each large muscle group --- thighs, shoulders, stomach -- tightening down and converting active tissue into useless slabs of meat. In the last five strokes before I hauled myself onto shore, the thought “I don’t think I’m going to make it” went through my head.

I had a worm on me when I got out. I didn’t discover it for a few minutes, because we were all covered in sludge. As picked the winding strips of algae from the legs and stomach, I saw something moving. He was a tiny little guy, maybe one centimeter, and the width of an angel hair pasta. I could see his little nasty teeth on one end. Needless to say, this prompted a full-body search, focused especially on the inside of my underwear. I saw the movie Stand By Me, I’m no fool.

(As I revisit the subject in my head, I think I’m just going to give myself a deworming dose of albendazole just to be sure.)

Then we just cavorted and took silly pictures in our underwear next to the summit marker, until George came and told us we had to go down.