After just 1 night in Rutana, I was ready to continue my journey to Makamba, a very short hop, just 52km.
My room at the Arkador Lodge in Rutana:
The bathroom had a plumbed-in shower, sink, and toilet, but they brought you water in a bucket. I was talking to the guy where I got my breakfast about this. I mentioned my room in Guinea, West Africa, where I had a toilet, shower, bathtub tub and a bidet, but 2 buckets of dirty water.
Even in Bujumbura, there are many areas without running water. He was laughing, “You pay 80 USD for a room and water is brought in a bucket”.
We discuss the lack of a mains water supply.
“There exists. We have the lake. We have water pumping stations, to clean the water, to get it to every house in Burundi. I don’t know what happened to my country”.
I am not against bucket showers. It was the norm in Indonesia and India for me but there the water was endless. Here you get 1 bucket.
After getting a breakfast of coffee, bread and a tomato onion omelette at the same place as the day before, I made my way down to the main road.
A nice guy who shows me the Buragane bus agency office, where I buy a ticket for 8,000 BFr for Makamba, which will be coming from Bujumbura.
The office is sandwiched between the Kings Sport Bet and The Pharmacie La Gloire:
The minibus turns up, but I am ushered onto a 14-seater minivan instead that arrives soon after.
Check out the guy in the MG TECHNOGYM cycling top:
The road is bad. Lots of potholes. The 52 km takes an age:
Many of the hotels promised on Google Maps for Makamba are fake. They simply do not exist. I have left comments on Google Maps to help y’all.
I take a motorbike taxi to the Nonara Park Hotel (not shown on Google Maps in the correct location either), 2.5 km back down the road. Rooms start from 30,000 BFr (7.50 USD), with 24 hr water, great Wi-Fi (depending on the power supply) and an on-site restaurant, where a flask of coffee costs about 60 cents US, 500 ml beers for less than a dollar. Great food at low prices.
Room B10 at the Nonara Park Hotel (they have rooms from 30000 to 80000 BFr).
After three days with only a bucket of water a day, I finish my laundry (they have massive water tanks and a small pump).
