When you’re a suburban kid living in a big city, one of the first things you learn is how to get to a place that doesn’t feel “like the city.”

When I arrived, Kristen handed me the link to Azadeh’s blog, which is all about living in Kinshasa and what to do and see…so of course I picked out *everything* that looked fun. Kristen has been here for over a year, so the first thing she picked to do didn’t surprise me. We were going to Symphonie Natural.

Symphonie Natural is exactly what it sounds like, it’s a natural park within Kinshasa’s city limits. Kristen has never been there before, so she figured it would be fun for both of us to do something new. We packed up a snack bag, copied down the directions from Azadeh, and piled into the truck! (Oh, also bugspray. LOTS OF BUGSPRAY.)

The directions seemed pretty clear when we read them at the house. Go down this main road. Turn on this other road, continue to the end, turn right, and you’ll see it!

Well…. We got to the main road. And there were actually street signs in Kinshasa, which is UNHEARD OF, so we hunted. And we hunted. And we hunted. We stopped and asked approximately 12 people, who all seemed to know of this street and would tell us things like, “Oh yes 2 streets up!” and “Yes yes! Five streets to the left!” The attempted triangulation took almost 35 minutes when we became so exasperated that when Kris stopped to ask the next people, three all said they knew where Symphonie Natural was, so she ended up asking two of them to hop into the back of the truck and direct us there.

Yep, you read right.

We picked up two strangers and had them come in our truck so we could get to Symphonie Natural.

NBD, this country is totally safe! 

Magically, the two guys who we picked up actually DID know where the turn was (p.s. there’s a giant, 40% worn off, green sign marking the street to turn on), so we were already better off than before we had picked them up. I *wish* I had taken photos of the road we were driving down, because it was that absurd. A huge decline, gigantic “potholes” every five feet (I don’t think you can even call them potholes – the road was dirt and it was just uneven everywhere), oh and there were “bridges” that were just planks of wood balanced across aboveground sewers so you had to line your wheels up and pray you didn’t miss.

Super. Fun.

Finally we hit the end of that road and turned right. YAY!

Then we started down a dust road and drove for a while… like a while to the point Kris and I were worried that these two guys might not be taking us to Symphonie Natural and we might have made a grave mistake.

However, just as we were getting nervous, a sign for Symphonie Natural appeared and we turned right again, and in a few minutes more, we were there!

We parked the truck and our two guides showed us to the main area, and the Symphonie Natural guide came out to chat with us. He ended up giving us a personal tour, which was pretty awesome.

Symphonie Natural really doesn’t feel like it’s in Kinshasa; it’s more like what you expect from the internal Congo. It’s lush and beautiful rainforest, and one of the sights we got to see, as per our guide, was “the largest cave in Kinshasa!”

Yep. That’s it in that photo to the left. 

We got to see some gorgeous flowers, check out tons of other fauna, and just generally enjoy a really nice afternoon in nature, as opposed to the city. As we walked, we chatted with our guide, who asked several times if we were “tired” or “hot” – clearly he had no idea who he was dealing with! — , until we returned to where we had parked the car. We sat down to eat our snacks, and when we were done, our city guides hopped back in the truck with us so we could deliver them back to civilization.

The ride back was *much* faster than the ride in, but that could also be because we were significantly less concerned with being lost or abducted. Hah.

Once we reached the main street, we released our guides and Kristen paid them, and we were on our way home!

First Dara and KT adventure, complete!