The Roads Less and More Travelled

Our group went in seperate directions, the Swedes flew to Mocambique, Canadian Paul and American Scott went to Zanzibar whilst us remaining four headed over the lush green hills into Burundi. According to unconfirmed facts Burundi is the poorest country in the world, something I find a bit hard to believe. Our visas only allowed us to stay for three days so as soon as we had found a hotel we got started on finding out was on offer in the capital Bujumbura, it turns out they have a busy market, a nice empty beach on Lake Tanganiyka and an amusing nightscene. After two nights we had to leave the country and while Eric went up to Kenya, the lure of beach-life made the other three of us get on a 30-hour busride across the entire width of Tanzania to Dar Es Salaam. In Dar we got a ferry across to the island of Zanzibar and it's capital Stonetown. Stonetown has shades of Lamu with it's Swahili architecture and twisting maze of alleys, but on a much larger scale. We slept one night in town and then headed up the coast to the paradise beach of Kendwa, where Canadian Paul and Scott were waiting. I don't use the word paradise lightly but this stretch of white sand definetly qualifies and I could easily have gotten stuck here for a very a long time but luckily I woke up one morning to the sound of rain which convinced me to get back into travelling mode and return to Stonetown. I stayed overnight and got lost in the labyrinth for a while and then got the ferry back to Dar Es Salaam  where I slept two nights before deciding that I was done with Tanzania and got a bus towards Malawi.