The Congolese Ring of Fire

Crossed the border this morning into Congo (or the DRC, as it is affectionately referred to by the locals), stopping through Gisenyi, a dusty border town at the Northwestern corner of Rwanda.

Adams and I spent an hour or so in Goma: a filthy, disorderly town, part of which had been burned when the nearby volcano erupted. We bought expensive groceries and permits to enter the national park.

That afternoon, we climbed said volcano (Mount Nyiragongo), which is still active. It was a fast, intense, climb- four hours of hiking straight up, often on sharp, black, volcanic rock.

We summitted around 5:30 and peered into a cauldron of boiling lava, veiled by cloud of smoke and steam. The porters pitched our tent and built a fire. Adams and I shared our groceries with them around the fire and we silently consumed thousands of calories of bread, cheese, meat pastries, and biscuits. The air around us was very cold- maybe 45 degrees.

That night, the cloudy veil lifted and we looked into the lava directly. We drank banana liquor around the fire for an hour, and went to sleep at 8:30.