We’ve been using the lonely planet’s guide to east Africa as our bible for this trip… in it, it has the highlights for each of the countries. For Burundi, one of the four highlights is: “enjoy being one of the only tourists in the country.” Its true. Seriously off the tourist radar, and for no good reason. Gorgeous country. Probably my favourite so far… you just have to get past a serious military presence and a slightly less efficient transportation system than rwanda’s.
Bujumbura was random. We got stuck for accommodation and ended up in quite literally, a beach house. Slightly out of the budget but, considering what we got, totally worth it. Met a Burundian guy at a bakeshop – yeah, apparently Burundi is known for its baked goods – who took us to his friend’s coffee factory.. it was more 2 hours of him telling a slew of random stories from his past. he was nice enough to point us around the town though and help us barter for some burundian/congolese crafts.
we took a hellish bus trip from bujumbura down, eventually, to kigoma, tanzania. this route is not well travelled and involved a lot of clown car transportation. 14 people vehicles were more of a suggestion than a rule, as they were in rwanda. had it not been for that though, we certainly would not have made it to kigoma in one day... there were a lot of close calls where they just shoved the white people into the car.. actually they shoved us, and then stopped for a family of 10 that i was certain would not fit. they did. sort of.
the train accross tanzania didn't pan out at all and so now we're flying. not as rugged but its bought us some extra time and maybe a bit of sanity. we snorkelled in lake tanganyika, ate its very fresh fish and gawked at a bunch of spectacular views of the lake instead.
its been a nice break to be in a land less travelled... now we're off to the mecca of east african toursim for more fish and sunburns.
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