The journey towards luxury

Unfortunately the journey wasn't particularly luxurious at all. In anticipation of meeting up with my uncle Andrew and travelling with him in Rwanda for two weeks staying in his choice of hotel rather than our normal what's the cheapest we can find approach, we had camped basically every night in Uganda. Unlike in southern Africa where camping was usually accompanied by excellent toilets and showers in Uganda they were generally smelly pit toilets and cold showers. To put it bluntly we smelt... and were covered with dust as well. It probably didn't help that the minibus from the border to Kigali was an over crowded minibus with a whole bunch of other smelly people, requiring open windows ensuring a final layer of dust over everything. Our bags were strapped to the top of the bus and so had both achieved a brown coating by the time we disembarked. Not wanting to be total slobs we did opt for a taxi from the bus station to the hotel, rather than the cheaper boda-boda (motorbike taxi). Still, when we got out at the Kigali Serena where we were staying with Andrew noone rushed to help us with our bags, instead we got some rather strange looks.

The reception was however able to be convinced that we were actually staying there and replacing our backpacks we headed up to see our room..... and WOW!!!! Amazing. We weren't even willing to touch anything in our state of disrepair. After showers... with a shower door!! and a bathmat!! we dressed in the fluffy bathrobes whilst we set about doing a load of washing in the bath.... just to give us something clean to change into. After that we had another shower. In fact from being in a state of 'No, can't face a cold shower today'.... we are having 3 showers and a bath a day. Never has it felt so good to be clean.