We were ten people in total, ranging in age from 18 year old boy to about 45 years. On Saturday morning we were at the Rwanda and we planned for gorilla trekking tours in Rwanda and Nyiragongo Hike in DRC Congo. After the gorilla trek we transferred to the border in Gisenyi at 7.30 – 08:00am. After all the custom procedures to enter DRC, we met one of the volcanologists and our guide. They accompanied us to the foot of the volcano where we negotiated each price of per person. We left the base office at exactly 10:00. The first bit of the trail goes through beautiful rain forest. It is amazing to see all the indigenous trees and hear the different bird songs. After a while we left the forest to walk on old lava from the 2002 eruption.
We followed the lava to our lunch spot, which was about halfway up the volcano. When the erupted in 2002 the lava came out of the side of the mountain and not the top, we saw the place where it emerged and there was still some smoke coming out. The lava flowed down the path we had come up, and then stopped before it reached the town. But it then found another way under the volcano and came out of the side of the mountain at another place, near the airport, from where it went through the town and ended up in the Lake Kivu.
After lunch we went through the rain forest again. The path was now much steeper and we also had some rain. We reached the huts about 16:30pm. There used to be three metal huts- one is now down completely, half of the second one is still standing and the third one is still okay. We pitched one ten inside hut number 2 and other two tents outside.
The guide guard and porter slept in hut number 3. They also carried up a bag of charcoal and we could warm ourselves up and get our clothes dry. We also used this hut for doing all our cooking. Outside it was quite chilly but the amazing view over the other volcanoes, lake and town made up for it. After a rest and dinner we climbed for final 30 minutes to the summit, it was dark so we used torches and head lamps. We could only see a red glowing mist in the big volcano pot. We could hear the lava bubble down under. It sounded like the waves of the sea; we could only see the lights of the two towns and all the fishing boats down on the lake.
We were back on the summit the next morning just after sunrise. We traversed for about half an hour around the volcano rim. All the mist out of the huge pot and we could see the lava down at the bottom. What an amazing sight. We were standing on top of a live volcano. On the way down we investigated the crater at our lunch spot more closely and then followed the lava back to the base. It was an amazing weekend.
