Congo, Day 3.
One of the
benefits of not having electricity is that there’s really nothing to do but
sleep after it gets dark. As a result, you’re up at dawn and chipper as hell.
Susan and I took our morning meal in the camp’s main building. Michael Pollan
would love the Congo; I’m reasonably sure everything we ate (save for a jar of
Nutella) originated within five miles of where we broke our fast.
We packed
ourselves into our military vehicle and bounced down one mountain and up
towards another. Today we were scheduled to climb Nyiragongo volcano.
On the way
there, our driver flagged down another truck and bought some bread from them (How
he knew the moving vehicle contained bread for sale I know not). Although there
was no way for us to know it, this was the entirety of the supplies we would have on this trip. We don’t know if
this was a miscommunication, another example of African half-assery or another
rip-off, but we being were sent to climb a goddamn volcano with three pieces of
bread and two bottles of water.
At the base
of the volcano, we were reunited with the Korean film crew (and the Korean Bear
Grylls), along with a handful of other people headed to the rim. The plan was
to climb the volcano, spend the night on the caldera in a cabin, then return in
the morning. Porters would carry our luggage to the top and back for the
princely sum of $12 a day. Susan wanted one. I thought I could carry my own
gear, then relented under Susan’s concern. Susan, it turned out, is much
smarter than me.
Halfway up,
we had stopped for a break. One of the Dutchmen from the previous day’s gorilla
trek was also heading for the summit. He was suffering mightily as he lumbered
into the clearing and plopped down, clearly on the edge of throwing in the
towel. Korean Bear Grylls saw this and tried to motivate him by yelling at him
in Korean, then pounding him with a partially-filled water bottle. The Dutchman
got pissed off and started whaling on Korean Bear Grylls with his own
half-filled bottle. This only motivated KBG more, and the two men flagellated
each other for several minutes. “No one back home will believe this is
happening,” I said to Susan, as the Dutchman and Korean executed their savage ballet.
“You’re
right,” she said. “I better film this.” And she did:
The climb
was a little over five miles. It took six hours to go eight kilometers. We
climbed something like 8,000 feet, almost all of it over volcanic scree. At our
last stop before the top, Susan and I discovered that we had no supplies. On
our last drops of water, the trip once again took on the tinge of a battle for survival
instead of a relaxing vacation.
Several of
us made for the rim to see the volcano. At first blush, it wasn’t so impressive
in broad daylight. We stood a vertical half mile above a bubbling crater of
lava and peered through thick clouds of steam that warmed the breeze. Seemingly
out of nowhere, it began to rain. Susan and I picked our way carefully back to
shelter, reaching it only after we had been drenched by the cloudburst.
At 12,000
feet, well above the tree line, the wind was whipping. As the sun began to
drop, it began to get positively chilly. Neither Susan or I had brought
appropriate clothing for cold weather; I mean, you would think the middle of
Africa wouldn’t warrant a parka, right?
We were
housed in a handful of chalets just below the volcano’s rim. Each one was
fairly basic, sheets of metal bolted into a rudimentary box, each with a rubber
sleeping pad. No evidence of bedding. When Susan enquired, we were told that we
could rent a sleeping bag for $25. This was the equivalent of two day’s wages.
Susan accepted the offer. I declined. Once again, Susan was smart. I was not.
My idiot
plan was to wrap myself in both our ponchos, then ride out the night encased in
an impermeable burrito of rubber (wow, that sounded dirtier than I thought it
would). This plan completely backfired: Since our ponchos were non-porous, the
heat I generated condensed and seeped back into my clothing, leeching further
heat from my body. This vicious cycle lasted from sundown to 11 PM, when I
awoke, shivering uncontrollably and having difficulty breathing in the thin
air.
I could
think of three options: I could go outside and try to find the guides and rent
a sleeping bag from them (the darkness, dangerous rocky ground and the howling
wind cast doubt on the viability of this plan). I could admit I was wrong in
not taking the sleeping bag and ask Susan for help. Or I could die with
dignity.
While I
pondered this, the sound of my gasping through chattering teeth woke Susan up. Here
is our conversation:
Susan: Noah?
Noah: Mmmm?
Susan: You
OK?
Noah:
Mmmm..
Susan: What’s
wrong?
Noah:
Dying.
Susan: Oh.
She thought
about my predicament for a moment, then stuffed me in her sleeping bag until I
stopped shivering uncontrollably. Then she popped herself in. Two full-sized
adults in a single sleeping bag makes for a tight fit; Susan and I were
literally nose-to-nose for about five hours. I love Susan dearly, but this was
the literal definition of “too close for comfort.”
We woke up
at 4 AM to view the volcano in the predawn darkness. At night, it was beautiful.
See?
The crater.
The rim at night.
I’m not
sure if it was majestic enough to put myself through this again, but it was
pretty damn spectacular, sitting there in silence, watching the churning magma
below. As dawn broke, the camp roused in preparation for the return leg. Susan
and I returned to our cabin, where, in the rapidly improving light, it became
clear I had taken some rather drastic measures to survive the freezing cold. The
following conversation took place:
Susan: Noah?
Noah: Yeah?
Susan: Are
you wearing underwear as a hat?
Noah: Mind
your own business, woman.
Susan:
Wait, are you wearing socks as gloves?
Noah: Nunya’!!!
Susan takes photos too, unfortunately.
Being on a
trip brings you so close to your significant other. Ten minutes later, Susan
and I found our way to the stinky volcano latrine. “Noah, cover me while I take
a shit,” my beloved requested, ever the lady.
“Only if
you cover me,” I replied.
In a
musical, this might have turned into a duet. Toilet en du volcan, perhaps.
We headed
down. Susan is the worst mountain descender ever. It took her five times longer
to go down than to go up. Her strategy was to literally scoot the five miles down
entirely on her butt. After a hundred yards of stupefyingly slow progress, two
of the porters took pity on Susan and literally held her hand and walked her
down for five miles. “We’re breaking up if you photograph this,” said an angry
Susan who’d caught me fumbling for my camera.
The journey
down only took about two hours. An exhausted Susan stumbled into the clearing
and collapsed. We begged a bottle of water off the Korean film crew and
greedily chugged it, grateful to still be alive. Both of us were dirty and sweaty.
We had traveled through four countries without taking a shower, and we smelled
a sour mixture of fear and total exhaustion.
We had one
last adventure – our ride back to the border was in a jacked-up flatbed truck
(with the obligatory armed guard in back, of course). NATO had graded all the
roads leading back to Goma in this part of the country, so lighter vehicles
could pass. Nevertheless, we were thoroughly jostled by the trip; Every so
often we would pass a giant dump truck returning from the field. The bed of these
trucks were stacked impossibly high with sacks of crops. Workers say
precariously atop the cargo, some 30 or 40 feet above the broken ground that
rushed by at 60 kph. Several times, we saw a worker start to topple, to be saved
only by grabbing one of the ropes used to lash down the giant sacks of maize
and potatoes.
On the outskirts
of town, we came thisclose to vehicular manslaughter. We missed a guy on a
motorbike going the other way by microns. Our driver didn’t. even. twitch.” We
passed so closely, I whipped my head around to see the damage from what I
thought was an inevitable impact.
“What the
fuck was that?”
“Hakuna
Matata,” I said ultra-soothingly.
From behind
the wheel, our driver, who spoke not a word of English, gave a deep, slow nod
of agreement. His eyes never even left the road. No worries.
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