Journey to the Mountains of the Moon - 1994 (10)

Ruwenzori Circuit, John Matte Hut to Bujuku Hut, July 20th
This stretch of the trail took us through the Lower and Upper Bigo Bogs before traversing the northern edge of Lake Bujuku to arrive at Bujuku Hut. The scenery was brilliant with some truly amazing vegetation in the bog areas. The park authorities try to get everyone to stick to the trail and generally people do try to do this. In the boggy areas, however, it is difficult to see where the trail should be and most people try to keep dry feet- at least until they inevitably miss a tussock and end up in the bog anyway. Traversing the bogs is a very tiring process. Our tendency initially, like everyone else, was to try to keep our boots dry by leaping from tussock to tussock. Denisi, our guide was good at helping us to find the best paths but inevitably we started to miss the odd landing and got wet anyway. The water and mud would often reach to mid-thigh level and though gaiters helped to keep most of the mud out of our boots to some extent, the water seeped in anyway and we had to resign ouselves to wet feet for the rest of the day.

We had left John Matte Hut at around 9:10am and arrived at Bujuku Hut ahead of the Dutch party at around 4pm. Along the way we met up with the two British guys again as they were on their way back down to spend the night at John Matte Hut again. Just at the time we met up with them, which would have been mid-afternoon, the clouds lifted and we got a rare glimpse of the high peaks. Sightings are rare as they are frequently shrouded in cloud so we felt quite priviledged. The photo at left shows Bert admiring the sights near Lake Bujuku with giant Lobelia and giant Groundsel in the background.

Using our trekking poles to leap from tussock to tussock through the bog helped quite a lot and Pierre and Till did even better with two poles apiece. However, by the end of the day not only were our legs tired but so too were our arms and shoulders.

Giant Lobelias in Bigo Bog

On arrival at the very poor Bujuku Hut, at nearly 4000 metres ASL, Denisi and our Zairean porter set up a charcoal brazier to warm us up and help to dry our clothes. The Dutch party straggled in at around 6pm and we turned in for the night at 8pm. Part of the lower sleeping platform was broken, putting it on a bit of a lean which made sleeping uncomfortable for those unlucky enough to end up on it. It is very cold at this altitude and I was glad of having polar fleece overpants and jacket to wear. A lot of the Dutch party were in tents around the hut so they may have been even colder than we were.

Dominic and Bert outside Bujuku Hut