Plumbing the depths of the Golden Monkey.

Our accommodations in the small town of Kisoro is a Guesthouse called the Golden Monkey.  The place is named after the endangered primate who lives on the nearby mountain. It is classified as   We are paying $8  per person per night, plus meals.  The Travelers Rest across the main road is $70 per night.  It has a great restaurant, a beautiful courtyard, and probably has nice rooms too. Our room has five beds with very pink silky pillows., cement floors and walls, and two windows.  The shared bathroom is outside, around the corner of an alley.  There is no toilet seat or sink.

“backpacker” accommodation, and was referred to us by someone who had been here as “Africa nice”.

   The shower at Golden monkey is a high tech bucket. It appears to involve a shower head that heats the water as it passes through.  There is a switch on the wall outside, a wire through the shower wall, and three ominous bare lengths of copper connected with electrical tape to the side of the shower head.  If you switch it on, it heats the water to lukewarm. If you touch the showerhead,  you get a pretty good shock. Oh, and it basically comes out at something between a drip and a continuous pour, like out of a pitcher.  It’s fine though.  And they must save a lot of water this way.  The last morning the water gave out, and we were brought an actual bucket.  But the water was hot.

   The staff, who appear to work here 24 hours a day, every day, are extremely friendly.  The waitress joined the students in a card game for half an hour after lunch one day. Other residents include a reclusive engineer who is making more efficient wood burning stoves in order to save timber.  Another was a British primatologist who is conserving the actual golden monkeys on the mountain.  The place grew on me tremendously,  and I will definitely be back.