Nairobi, Kenya

There is not much colonial style architecture left in Nairobi.

Left Jinga after an early morning storm and the taxi had to take care with the motorbike taxis and bicycles on the wet slippery clay road. We arrived in plenty of time to get our bus connection to Nairobi and were lucky to have bought our tickets in Kampala previously as a few people hoping to get on the same bus were turned away as it was full.

The bus was promoted as a business class service. It had large seats with wide armrests between two seats and then just a single seat across the aisle. A most unusual seating plan for the countries we have been in so far as you can squash more people into a three and two seat configuration across bus and make more profit! It had air conditioning but it was inefficient and people kept their windows open. We were given an aluminium foil dish with a vegetable samosa and a piece of bread fried in egg as breakfast and it was included in the price of the ticket.

We were two hours from the Kenya border and exiting Uganda was a shambles with people shoving and pushing to get served and the moneychangers all wanting to get your money. The Kenyan border was even more disorganised where we had to wait to get a visa for $25 US each. There was a man in a white coat and a board with a sign saying it was a health checkpoint where they wanted to see proof of yellow fever vaccinations but as no one approached us we walked on and although we have had the vaccinations we didn't want to be held up in case we missed our bus. There were hordes of people trying to sell all kinds of things and loads of children begging and it would be the most desperate border town we have crossed so far.

The road was pretty potholed until we got to Kisumu. We passed dozens of tea plantations with gorgeous rows of whitewashed houses all joined together. The red rooves looked stunning against the green of the plantations and would have been housing for the field workers. They were in beautiful condition from the outside and the roadsides and towns nearby were well maintained and planted with beautiful gardens. We tried to get photos but the bus windows were badly crazed acrylic and it was impossible.

We stopped in Kenicho and Nakuru for toilets and food and arrived in Nairobi eleven hours after leaving Jinga. The towns in Kenya seem more prosperous than those we left in Uganda and we passed several wild zebra grazing on the roadsides.

Our guide book says the locals call Nairobi "Nairobbery" so many travellers we met told us about accommodation six or so kilometers out of the city, but we didn't want to be taking public transport in and out so chose a hotel in the city centre, and we were glad we did. We felt safe no matter where we went and other than taxi drivers approaching us we were pretty well left alone.

Across from our hotel was a 24 hour supermarket/shopping complex where we could get food and snacks. John found he had a hot spot on his ankle which was an old football injury so we were able to see a doctor in the shopping complex. We were conscious of deep vein thrombosis as being a problem when you fly and we were about to fly to Madagascar. On the doctor's suggestion John took some low dose aspirin. We also stocked up on more insect repellent and toiletries. Once again we bought a local SIM card and loaded data to our mobile dongle so we could have an internet connection. We were so busy we didn't have time to get any postings done and hoped to be able to do them in Madagascar.

Nairobi was unrecognisable to the city I visited thirty four years ago as many of the old colonial buildings have been replaced with glass towers. Our hotel was surrounded by several new buildings under construction so there is still a lot going on.

We have contacted a guide recommended by some Canadian travellers we met and after paying a deposit to him we have arranged to climb Mount Kenya when we return from Madagascar. I had to buy some warm long pants and some more socks for the climb. We are able to get warm jackets through the guide if needed. We will have a porter and a cook accompany us.

We tried to do as much walking as we could each day to get fitter and walked out to the Westlands shopping centre to get a Lonely Panet guide for West Africa in readiness for the next section of our travels. The prices were certainly much cheaper than if we had bought the book in NZ.

Have posted home a small parcel with some things for our daughter and the Southern Africa guide book we no longer need. We always burn two CDs of photos and send one home and keep one until we know that the first has arrived safely. The Post Office as one of the places I thought I would recognise as that was where I would go to get mail from John when I travelled in 1976, but it was completely changed. However, the system for posting parcels etc is still as shambolic as it was then. You have to wait for the clerk to frank every stamp on your mail else someone will take the stamps off and resell them!

While in Nairobi we saw lots of people in Uhuru Park registering with a government department which had set up tents to cope with the crowds. We also saw government workers assembled outside the town hall and wanting information on the "Ocampo Six". The news on TV and in the papers was all about the President and five government officials being investigated by the ICC in the Hague on election violence at the last elections. We enjoyed our time in 'Nairoberry' and felt safe. One night we did want to walk down a hill but a hotel worker stopped us and advised us not to go there at night. Many shops have armed security guards at night outside the closed shops.

Jinga, Uganda

Checked out the website for a rafting company in Jinga and saw that they offered a free shuttle to their camp so got up early to catch it along with 6 other young people.

Leaving Kampala along the Jinga Road was quite depressing. The villages on the outskirts of the city are squalid, made worse by the rain the night before. People are scratching a living selling what ever they can from shops made from roughsawn timber planks. They have no running water and no electricity. In the back of the shops they have constructed cages for ducks, or hens, and pens for goats or sheep, and everywhere there is mud and waste so the place stinks. Some people have hair salons while others sell some kind of food cooked on a charcoal fire.

As we neared Jinga we saw the usual terraced fields of maize, bananas, beans and potatoes. We passed a lot of tea plantations with their hill tops covered in mist. We also saw a large pulp and paper factory.as well as a big sugarcane processing factory, and several newish factories with Chinese names.



The rafting company has a backpackers in Jinga and a camp beside the Nile River so we went there where we got a safari tent. It was no where near as nice as the one we had at Lake Bunyonyi. I had to get the cleaner to come and show her how to clean the tent before we could settle in. Lots of Gappers and young backpackers come here and they don't care if their accommodation is clean or not so they set the standard very low.



From the town we walked to the Source of the Nile where we saw this cormorant with a huge Nile perch in its mouth that it was trying to eat. The place was teeming with birds.


There was a monument commemorating the CHOGEM in 2007 and saw NZ listed as being there and probably attended by Helen Clark. John thinks this would have been when she climbed Mount Kilimanjaro.

There was also a bust of Mahatma Gandhi, erected by the local brewery, as his ashes were dipped into the Nile here. There were several Indian families gathered at the spot having their photos taken.

34 years ago I went from Alexandria, Egypt following the Blue Nile to where it met the White Nile in Sudan and now I have been to the source. The river runs for 6400 kilometres and it takes the water about 3 months to get from the source to the Mediterranean Sea.

Jinga is known for its adrenaline sports and there are rafters and kayakers on the water everyday. Some of the young people we have met from Scotland, England, Sweden, and Norway have rented accommodation in the village and some have spent 7 weeks playing on the water and getting thrills on the grade 5 Bujagali Falls. The camp offers mountain biking and horse riding activities as well. On the weekend several people working for the NGOs come to enjoy the place.



We have met lots of people here, including a group of 5 Kiwis on a overland truck tour. We watched NZ play in the rugby sevens and enjoyed supporting our sportsmen with them.

Met some very young lads from Ireland and England who had been kayaking for several weeks in the river. They shared a dorm room and all 7 in the room had come down with malaria. Most of them were pretty pale skinned and a side affect of the doxycycline drug for malaria causes your skin to be sensitive to the sun so you can burn easily. They all stopped taking their medication as they were in the sun often and it also caused indigestion, especially if it is not taken with sufficient food or water. Of course they blamed the mosquito nets in their room as not working. It's a shame they hadn't been offered a different drug that didn't cause sensitivity to the sun rather than put them selves at risk.

We struck up a conversation with an American lady working in Arusha, Tanzania for the International Criminal Court, on cases for the Rwanda genocide. She worked with Dorothy whom we had met in Zanzibar and was also working for the ICC. She couldn't believe we knew someone in the office near her.

One of the rafting guides spotted our NZ flag on a bottle cooler and asked us where we were from. When we told him we were from Papamoa, he told us his uncle Kerry lived there. He was most surprised that we knew his uncle but then he was gobsmacked when John told him he knew his dad, Tony, and we had 3 days before got an email from his grandparents Lex and Rae. Grant had been river guiding in Scotland and Japan. We sent Lex and Rae this photo to see if they could recognize Grant. Lex and Rae are a well travelled couple and we enjoy getting together and chatting about our travels as they back packed into their 80s.

Jinga has some beautiful buildings that were constructed by the English speaking Catholic Christians, from Goa, India who came to work as traders in the early 1900s। The Indians valued education and in 1968, the Jinga Secondary School had one white student, half a dozen black students and 500 Asians। In 1972 all Indians were expelled by Idi Amin.


The Ugandan government has plans to construct another dam on the river and this will affect the river activities of some of the businesses here and we have heard different views on what will happen then. The electricity produced, they hope, will be enough for the country and some to sell to the neighbouring countries.

Kampala, Uganda

We got a motorbike taxi out of the lake to Kibale bus station where we crammed into a bus with three seats on one side and two on the other. Some of the sliding windows were broken and it was a bit of a wreck. People standing in the aisles had to bob down when we passed police checkpoints.



Katja whom we had met in Kinigi gave us the address of a hotel in Kampala so when we got off the bus we had to negotiate a ride with two motorbike taxis. It was rush hour in Kampala so the streets were smokey and jam packed. The hotel was clean and cheap and we were able to get something to eat before we rushed out the door to see the jam session at the National Theatre. Katja sings with a jazz band so we were hoping to see her there. Unfortunately there was a talent quest going on and then the jam session started but most were reggae singers. We didn't manage to see Katja.



We contacted James and Vanja that had been in our gorilla trekking group and they were having a farewell dinner the next day and then flying to UK straight after it. With thoughts of our Mt Kenya trek coming up we decided to walk the 45 minutes to the restaurant and use our new African map programme to get us there.



There were several Norwegian and Ugandan colleagues and friends to see Vanja and James off. Vanja wrote a poem for each person there and gave away some of her things to each person. She is very talented being able to whip up a poem in a few minutes in a language that is not her mother tongue. We were given a blow up plastic ball with a map of the world on it.

Vanja's poem: Even though you are both better fit than me and raced me to the top

I find your company quite entertaining and nothing close to a flop

You are both two inspiring lot, I am glad I met you

We'll sure meet again

Take the globe, no use for it now.

It's been a pleasure, One I will treasure.

And again my only rhyme is insane

We spent a bit of time walking around the city. It is pretty smoggy and people park anywhere so you have to pay attention to where you walk. Cars block off the footpaths and the paving is broken and the paths muddy. When you walk on the road the motor bike taxis could be coming at you from the wrong direction. There are so many 4x4 vehicles and they push their way in front of everyone. The minivan taxis follow each other around the streets racing to get the first passengers and trying to fill their vans. The arguments can get pretty loud with lots of hand waving, finger pointing and shouting and in no time the passengers or passersby also join in the bun fight. I reckon it is a national sport!






The trees in the city centre have dozens of Goliath storks nesting in them. They can be as big as a four or five year old child. The footpaths are white from their droppings and when it warms up it is pretty smelly.



A street side butcher shop.

This building is still covered with the protective plastic covering that came with the copper coloured glass panels. It was scaffolded and it looks like they maybe trying to get the sticky covering off which looks pretty baked on now but is peeling off in some places.

Our hotel was in a street where there were dozens of restaurants so we had a vegetarian meal at Govinda's Hare Krishna restaurant and also had one of the best curries I have ever tasted at the Masala Chaat restaurant.

We took our spare Vodafone internet modem to a repair shop to be unlocked but have not been able to test it yet so hope it will work when we need it.

Kerri has managed to get us some flights to Ethiopia from Kenya cheaper than we could find online. We would have gone overland but the Lonely Planet forum tells us that it is not possible to get visas at the land borders, only at the airport or in your home country. We have tried to contact the Ethiopian Embassy but to no avail. The visa is also only valid for 30 days from the day it is issued so it will expire before we get to the country if we get it in Kenya.

We met three Nepali Policemen in our hotel who are on leave from the UN peacekeeping group based in Dafur, Sudan. We have rarely met Nepalese travellers in all our years of travel.

Lake Bunyonyi, Uganda

Negotiated the 7 km ride to Lake Bunyonyi with a couple of motorbike taxis. The road was rutted red clay with lots of rocks and potholes. I remembered the words 'pole pole' which mean slowly, slowly and the drivers laughed but they did go slowly. There was a steep climb which meant I had to lean forward into his back so I wouldn't slip off the back of the bike, as I had my backpacked strapped tightly to my back as well. It also meant that when ever he revved I banged my head and glasses on the back of his helmet. Only the driver has a helmet and although they are compulsory most drivers don't wear them. They only see the passengers as money earners and don't want to spend money on helmets for them.


On the way up the hill there were lots of pine trees. In what looked to me like the fire breaks, people were shovelling the silt into piles. You could see where the rain flashed down the gullies that they created after removing the soil and causing terrible erosion. If the rock was exposed near the road they lit a fire under an overhang to crack hunks of rock off. Nearby were hordes of people with metal hammers cracking the rocks into smaller even sized pieces. There were piles lined up by the side of the road where the graded stones and sand were waiting for buyers to arrive. Dozens of children were also cracking the rocks and both sides of the road were a hive of industry.



The lake was really lovely. There were several islands in the middle of the lake and one was called Prisoner Island. It was pretty small with one dead tree and one live tree. Any woman who got pregnant before she was married was dumped on the island. As most of the women could not swim they died on the island. Other women were rescued by men who couldn't afford a dowry or were too old or no one else wanted to marry.



We met Kath and Mick from the UK who were travelling in their Landrover from London to Cape Town. They enjoyed the lake so much they stayed 7 days. They were kind enough to copy an African travel computer programme with maps for us and we spent a bit of time working out how to use it. It gives us ATMs, restaurants, transport depots and other places of interest in Africa. It could also tell us how far to locations on foot or by car etc. It will certainly be really useful for the rest of our trip.

We also met Paul from Ireland and he had started in Cape Town like us for the World Cup games. John saw him sitting alone and struck up a conversation with him. He turned to John and said I have met you before in Knysna, South Africa. We would never have thought we would have met someone from that far back in our travels.



We took a safari tent which was perched on poles overlooking the lake. Outside the tent was a deck area with tables and chairs and electric plugs and lights. The whole place was covered with a corrugated iron roof which was so practical and comfortable.

We could watch the locals going to and from market in their dugout canoes. We also watched two German guys going round and round in what the locals call 'the muzungu corkscrew'.

We were 2000 metres above sea level so it was a little cool at night but we had warm sunny days. John had his 63rd birthday while we were here and with our local SIM card and dongle we had a lot of data time to do what ever we wanted on the internet. We met an English guy and he managed to get our SKYPE working so we spent a couple of hours talking to our daughter Kerri and her fiance as well as chatting to John's brother Evan.

Several overland trucks stopped at the camp and the lake was busy with younguns jumping off the trees by the lake or swimming across to the other camp opposite us. On the weekend a Ugandan government department had a group stay for a conference so it was pretty busy.

John was happy to join the camp staff in the evenings and watch soccer on TV. We were able to network with a Canadian couple and get information on trekking on Mt Kenya in January.

It was a lovely relaxing time to set us up for the chaos of Kampala.

Kisoro, Uganda

Walked to the highway out of Gisenyi and hitched a ride on a taxi motorbike to the bus station. Caught one of the small buses that left every half hour for Musanze. The terraced hills on the way were seething with workers preparing the ground and planting seeds.




People walk every where at any time in Africa. They are always on the move. We often wonder why the buses are so full and where everyone is going. They don't carry a lot of luggage but travel long distances.



At Musanze we had to wait a short while for a minibus to the Uganda border. While we were waiting we bumped into the French guys who were turned back at the Rwandan border because they hadn't booked their visa online. They went into Burundi and then did what they should have, to get their visa, and came into Rwanda that way. It was good to know what happened to them so we don't say to each other"I wonder what happened to the French guys".

We had no problems at the Ugandan border getting our visas for $50 US each. John asked one of the immigration officials the rate to get a shared taxi or motorbike taxi to Kisoro and then the touts arrived quoting us 10 times the rate. John told them to give us the proper rate so they halved it and then he told them that they were cheating us. We left them to think about it and found a place to have our lunch. One of the taxi drivers had a call from one of his regular clients so he offered to take us into Kisoro at a reduced rate which was opportune.

Kisoro is a small place with shops along its long main road, which sits a long way below the shops. You have to climb up slippery clay banks to get from the street to the shops. There were small posters being pasted on to the houses and shops as there will be elections in Uganda in about three months. The locals told us that they are happy with the current president as he has brought peace to the country. He has served 4 five year terms already and looks set to do his fifth. We were also told that the president was due to make a visit to the town and we could see that there were a lot of road works and town beautification going on which would certainly encourage the locals to vote for him as they could see he was making improvements in their town.

The president with his trademark hat.



The locals had grasshoppers spread out drying on sheets of plastic which the locals eat. They stunk and were going a yellow-brown colour.


We found a basic guesthouse and which had a camp ground and a well set out front yard. The room was OK but needed a lot of maintenance. They were building a new block with guest rooms behind so it looked like there was no money for renovations. The night was really cold and wet so after waiting for a meal for an hour and a half we headed off to a warm bed.

The next morning we caught a minivan in the main street. When we put our packs in the back the driver lifted the whole bench backseat off the floor of the van and dumped our bags under it. The seat just floated above the bags. There were huge rusty holes in the floor and the windscreen was cracked in several places. The thing was a wreck!





We got the two front seats and even before the van was full we headed off. The conductor had to push start us. There was some kind of disagreement between the driver and a passenger as a suitcase got pushed in and out of the van window accompanied by a lot of raised voices and finger pointing. The suitcase owner chased us down the road and the commotion continued. We headed up a hill out of town and the driver got a call from the suitcase owner and we had to wait for someone to come and get the suitcase. Every passenger got in on the discussion at this point which we thought was hilarious.

While stopped, the driver got out his tools and and bashed away at the battery terminals. The bus had to roll backwards so the driver could start the engine again. The van smoked badly and it came through every hole in the floor.

We stopped at a barrier across the road, as a small private plane had to fly across the main highway, which ran through the middle of the airstrip. Maybe the president had made an early visit.

Travelled over the Karaba Gap where the road was being prepared for asphalt and we could see a lake in the distance. At a traffic police point we were pulled over. The driver was issued a blue traffic violation ticket and had his number plate seized by the police. We took this to mean that the vehicle was banned from operating. However, we did continue our journey to Kibale.


Kibale is a busy small town similar to Kisoro where the shops all line the main road and they go on and on. Looked for a hotel as recommended in our guide book as being scrupulously clean. They only had a single bed that they said was a double and clean it was, but not' scrupulously', we decided we would continue to Lake Bunyoni instead.


We found a MTN cellphone company office and the lovely lady there activated the Ugandan SIM card that we had bought so we could use it on our modem to get internet connections in Uganda. A short trip to the Barclay's Bank and we could get money out for our stay and we were ready to head to the lake.

Gisenyi (Rubavu), Rwanda

We had a leisurely small bus to Gisenyi and Lake Kavu. Many towns in Rwanda had name changes when the President rezoned a lot of the provinces so we were a bit confused when we thought we were heading for the place on our map only to be told we were going somewhere else.

While in Kinigi to see the gorillas we met Albert, his wife Jill and daughter Savannah. They were showing Albert's mum and dad about. Albert worked in the DRC (Democratic Republic of the Congo) for Mercy Mission as a water engineer but lived in Rwanda at Gisenyi which is a few kilometres from the DRC border town of Goma. Albert invited us to contact them when we got to Gisenyi so we did. We met for a drink and a pizza snack at their friend's restaurant on the lake.

We stayed in a guesthouse that looked like it had been decorated in the 70 s. We were the only guests and the place was on the side of a hill overlooking the lake and town. The town was a dusty place with potholed roads and only one sealed road in the shopping area near the market, and it had only been put down a couple of months ago.



The peninsula in the photo is actually in the DRC. We could see planes coming and going from the airport in Goma several times a day.

We didn't have a map of the town so just wandered around the lake front where children were swimming and families sitting under the trees. There were some luxury hotels along the waterfront where the rich Rwandans like to come and relax away from the diesel fumes of Kigale.

Lake Kivu is one of only three known 'exploding lakes' caused by limnic eruptions; exploding underwater methane pushes a huge cloud of CO2 above the surface of the lake. It triggers a tsunami and the carbon dioxide, being heavy, sits on the water surface or ground causing animals and people to asphyxiate. In the middle of the lake is a methane extraction plant. This is piped out of the lake and some of it is used to power the boilers at the Bralirwa Brewery. In theory the use of methane gas for electricity could increase Rwanda's energy production by 2000% and allow it to export some to its neighbours.

The electricity was erratic all the time we stayed and it rained on and off. One day the rain was so heavy we had to get pots from the kitchen and put them under the leaks in our room and in the lounge. One bedroom completely flooded.

From our patio we could see the Nyriagongo volcano in the DRC, in the day it would let off a steady puff of steam and at night there was a large glowing red ball. I tried several times to photograph it but there was too much cloud or rain. The volcano erupted in 2002 and buried much of Goma in the DRC in lava. With so much volcanic activity the soil is pretty fertile and every where where crops can be grown they are thriving.


We watched this sign go up from our patio.


These guys worked all day digging sand silt from the river and tossing spadefuls onto the bank, while others then shovelled it onto the back of a truck. It was taken around the corner to where they were building a large two storied building near the hospital. We could hear lots of cheering and chanting and saw lines of men and women passing cement in trays, made from plastic jerry cans cut in half, up to the top of the building. This went on for two days and the singing and chanting motivates them to get the tedious job done quickly, even in the rain. No truck pours here.

We were quite a walk from the town centre so had to hire motorbike taxis to get us to and from the bus station with our bags but we were lucky enough to be next door to a nice hotel where we could eat reasonably priced meals in the evening and enjoy the night lights of Gesenyi.

Parc National des Volcans, Rwanda

We caught a small coach from Kigali. It had 2 seats on one side and one on the other but the aisle had a small low back seat that folded up against a fixed seat so passengers could get in and out. Sometimes this means that the whole aisle row has to exit the bus if several people from the back seat want to get off the bus. It also means that the bus fills from the back row first. In Rwanda it seems they only take as many passengers as they have seats for which is quite a change from the other countries we have visited.

We climbed up and up through mountain villages. We could see lots of industrious people hoeing and weeding ready to plant maize before the wet season starts in earnest. We saw terraced crops of potatoes, maize, lemon grass (citronella), beans, peas, rice (dry mountain rice), pyrethrum daisies, cucumbers, squash, tea bushes, and tomatoes. In the rocky or stony ground and along the paths were eucalyptus gum trees.



I sat next to a 36 year old man from Burundi who had studied in Kampala. He had graduated with a BSc and was working at a university in Burundi and had been lecturing in Kigali. His field was livestock improvement and farm management. He had finished lecturing and was going to spend the weekend visiting his family in Ruhengeri (now known as Musanze, after the new president rezoned the provinces).

We got off in Musanze and took a minivan to the small dusty village of Kinigi just a few kilometres away. Most tourists stay at the hotels and lodges in Musanze but they were too expensive for us so we chose a guesthouse near the national park office. From Kinigi we had to hire 2 motobike taxis to take us the 3 kms to the guesthouse. Of course they wanted to charge us extra for the backpacks that we had to strap to our backs anyway. John bargained them down to half the rate they wanted but we paid them the starting price anyway. At the end of the day they will never do the job for less than it is worth but it is always interesting to see how much more they expect 'muzungu' to pay!

The guesthouse had a great view of the volcanoes and mountains that surrounded it. We didn't have a booking but got a nice double room with a hot shower and TV with one local channel. The rate included breakfast and we could eat at the restaurant for lunch and dinner. We did think we might be able to get some food for lunch in Kinigi village but only found a few carrots and tomatoes in the market and a shop with dry bread. As the locals grow so much of their own food they have no need of factory made provisions.

The early morning misty view reminded us of the Chinese scroll paintings.

We had a bit of time before our trip to Volcano National Park to see the gorillas so we spent some time getting acclimatised to the altitude and walking about the area. The local kids would race from hoeing their plots to come and say hello and ask our name in their best English. This would be followed by 'give me money' or 'give me pen' and an enterprising couple of boys wanted English dictionaries that we could buy them in the market. Sometimes there would be hordes of them following us with their hands out for money.



In Kinigi village I spotted these two boys with their home made wire truck. I first saw these when I was in Africa in 1976 and have been looking to get a photo of one since we arrived in Africa 5 months ago. I raced around the back of the shops hoping to catch them as they came around the corner. I pretended to take a photo up the street and then they saw me and walked up to me and greeted me so I was able to get a shot without them knowing I was taking it of them. We have not seen very many of these toys and maybe they have been replaced by plastic toys made in China instead.

There were not many guests at the guesthouse over the 3 nights we spent there. Most people arrived late, got up early, and moved on the next day. Even the staff were surprised that we stayed 3 nights. We met a German lady who had been volunteering with an NGO (Non Government Organisation). She taught the women tailors how to draft patterns and give shape to the clothes that they made for their clients.

Another guest was Katya was from Slovenia and she was working in Kampala, Uganda. She had to cross into Rwanda to have her visa renewed. She worked in media, producing and directing video productions. She also sang jazz in a Ugandan group and has invited us to see them when we go to Kampala next.

When we had got our park permits to see the gorillas we asked if we needed any other information to see the gorillas and were told that we would be told everything at the 7am briefing. In the meantime we learnt from other guests that we needed to hire a driver and a 4 wheel vehicle to get from the park office to the start of the walk to the gorilla groups, and back. We also learnt that the rate for the vehicle was $80 US for the walks nearby and $120 US for the furthest track. After paying $500 US for the park permit it seemed very steep and the vehicle mafia had set the rate so there was no negotiating it. However John met an English guy who offered a ride in his vehicle.

In our group of 8, which is the maximum size of a group visiting the gorillas, were
James, the English guy, who is working as a civil engineer for a Kenyan company and his Norwegian girlfriend Vanja. She worked for a Norwegian company based in Kampala designing crash helmets. We met Jessica, from US, who worked for Peace Corp and had been 2 months in Kigale doing administrative work. Leon, Kirsten (UK) and Kaitlan (US) were doing their medical electives in a rural hospital in Uganda. Most were in their middle twenties and we managed to keep up with them on the walk.

We had chosen to see the Susa group, which we had read about in Dian Fossey's book "Gorillas in the Mist", and it is the largest habituated group they visit. It took a couple of hours to get to the start of the trek. At this time of the year the gorilla like to eat bamboo which is full of moisture after the rains. The walk through the bamboo groves was stunning.



Trackers are employed to follow the gorillas everyday. This helps prevent poaching of the gorillas and the guides are in touch with the trackers by radio so they know where the groups are. Along with the guide we had an armed guard and we were also offered porters if we needed them but no one did.

The gorillas were in the top of the 4 metre high bamboo so we had to climb up to see them. The bamboo was covered with vines so we were able to stand on top of the bamboo to see the gorillas. Sometimes we would hear the bamboo crack as a too heavy gorilla swung on it and he would go crashing down and then scramble up for a new pole.

An old female

The gorilla are so used to humans that they just carried on as though we weren't there. All groups are only allowed an hour with the gorillas and only 40 people a day are given permits.

We saw a set of twins and they rolled down the vine covered bamboo or wrestled with each other.
A laid back guy.

Each gorilla is given a name and once a year there is a naming ceremony for them. The gorilla can be identified by the grooves above his nose and, like fingerprints, each one is different. Groups are still studied as they were by Dian Fossey.



The leader of this group probably weighs 300kg and as the males get older they get a silvery back. The immature males have black backs. After the gorillas had finished feeding they rested under the bamboo so we went under to watch. This silverback strode past John and Leon as they were crouched with their cameras. John could have breathed on him he was so close. Amazing! The silverback had a red gash below his lip as he had been in a fight with the second silverback in the group who fancies his chances for the leadership.

This gorilla found a wild banana to eat. They eat about 16 different types of vegetation. There was a well pregnant gorilla and she sat away from the group eating and resting and she looked as though she would give birth at any time. The gestation period is the same as for humans. One young male gorilla rushed at us a few times and the guide, Edward, would shoo him away. Edward said he wants to touch people but the policy was not to let them do that.

There are 258 gorilla now (in Rwanda) and the population is increasing. However there are also gorilla in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Uganda.

We all enjoyed the experience very much and came away thinking about the future of these rare animals and the effects of tourism on them and the communities, as well as the costs for keeping up such projects in the future.

Kigali, Rwanda

After getting our visa we were shown to a small newish tidy bus and instantly we experienced the quiet spoken friendly manners of the Rwandans. The streets of the border town were spotlessly clean. Rwanda has banned polythene plastic bags so everyone uses paper bags for their groceries. The billboards in the town proclaimed that corruption was not good for the country and urged everyone to pay their taxes and get the country growing.

What a change from the deserts in the south, the hills went on and on and were covered with lush vegetation while the waterfall thundered with raging red-brown water.

We left at the time they said they would leave and the bus was not even half full. At each small town we pulled into the well laid out bus stations and dropped off passengers who were connecting with minivans to go to some of the mountain villages. Rwanda felt instantly well organised and the transport sysytem was working well for the locals.

The houses in the villages near the main sealed road had corrugated iron roofs and were neatly plastered and brightly painted. There were small gardens with cropped hedges and flowers in the garden all giving the impression that the Rwandans were proud of their communities. It was unlike anything we have seen for a long time.

In Kigali we rolled into a street full of minivans and had a short walk to our hotel. A young guy from the bus offered to showed us where to go and he told us he had a Rwandan mum and an Italian dad and had been living in Kigali for 4 years. He was working with a foundation for street kids. He was going to email us to visit the project but we never heard from him which was a shame.

The hotel was not far from everything we needed. It was set down a hill and away from the busy noisy street so we had a restful stay. Kigali, with a population of about one million, spreads out over rolling ridges, hills and valleys so we could get a great view from the balcony on our room across the city.

Place de l'Unite Nationale

We enjoyed the cooler 24 degree temperatures and with only a short walk to the ATM at the Ecobank for money, and then to the national park office for our gorilla permits, and a downhill stroll to the MTN shop to get data for our mobile internet connection, we were done with all our business in under 2 hours. Opposite the MTN was a supermarket where we could buy pastries from the bakery, fruit from the vege section and restock on washing powder, coffee, toothpaste etc. That in itself is a major achievement but to do it all without having to use public transport and in such a short time is not far off a miracle in an African city!

The view from our hotel.

The hotel had satelite TV so we were able to see John Keys, the NZ Prime Minister, with sad news about the Pike River miners' deaths in a second explosion in the South Island coal mine.

We visited the Kigali Memorial Centre by local minibus. It had a very well laid out display recounting the history of the Rwandan genocide with the Hutu and Tutsi tribes. The most enlightening section was that documenting the role of the colonising Germans, then the Belgians
and the parts they played leading up to the atrocities. The second part of the exhibit was a brief display of other 20th century genocides: Jews, Armenians, Kosovo, Bosnia, Cambodia. We realised that we had been to genocide memorials for all these groups except the Armenians. As always it is a sobering experience.

Motorbike taxis are the quickest way to get about. These guys wear vests with their registration number, have the number painted on their bike and helmets. They, by law, have to have helmets for their passengers. Compared with Asia it seems they only take one passenger rather than than the 5 or so Asians carry.

Rwanda has done a remarkable job getting the country to where it is today since the atrocities of 1994 and while they have moved on and no longer refer to separate tribes and call all ethnic groups Rwandans, many outsiders still think of Rwanda as a country at war. We saw many business people from Western countries in Rwanda. There is a lot of construction of huge offices going on in Kigali and except for a few begging children with deformed limbs, most people were well dressed and spending up a storm.

Rwanda is the most densely populated country in Africa with 9 million people and it is tiny. The government wants the refugees who fled to Tanzania, DRC, Burundi, and Uganda to return home. This will surely put a lot of pressure on the ability of the country to provide for its inhabitants without aid. Rwanda's relationship with these neighbours is at times tense and the number of non-government organisations working in the country are apparent in every small community.

Christians form the largest religious group with many of the churches being the American evangelical ones. Each religious group likes to advertise in its shop, hotel, restaurant, on its bus, motorcycle, car or taxi. When we meet people we are asked about our religious views. When we say good bye we are are always given a blessing by whatever god it is they believe in.

We felt safe wherever we went in Kigale and generally people left us alone but were happy to help us of we needed it. People who don't speak English often speak French so we have had to get the little French phrasebook out and delve deep into the memory banks for any fragments of French we still have from our high school days.

Mwanza, Tanzania

Our research, on the Lonely Planet Forum, with others we met, and with staff at our hotel told us to take the Jordan Bus from Arusha to Mwanza. When we went to the bus station we were swamped by touts and later, after checking with our hotel manager, we were able to find the booking office for Jordan as all the other people were agents and would charge us more than if we went 25 paces further to the booking office. It is such a confusing system for non residents. The booking office gives the 3 or 4 agents nearby him the master copy of the bus seating plan and it just goes round and round the bus station depending on whether the customer asks agent 1 or 2 or the booking office. A runner listens to where you want to go and then scoots off to get the seating plan while all the other touts shout and point you to their agency. It's bedlam! Most of the buses had 3 seats on one side of the bus and 2 on the other but they were full so we took the 'luxury' bus that had only two seats each side.

We had to wake the receptionist up as we headed off for our bus even before the morning prayer. The luxury bus had half of its persplex sliding windows covered in a very dark tinted film that was scratched and torn so it was difficult to slide them to get air and even more difficult to see out. In no time we were jam packed with bags and sacks and children in the aisles. The seat behind us had a lady and 3 children trying to jam into a space for one so we were glad not to be stuck with her in a bus with 3 seats across.

We could have taken another shorter bus route from Arusha to Mwanza by going north to the Kenyan border via Nairobi but would have had to pay for a transit visa. The bus would also have cut across the Ngorongoro Conservation area and we would have had to pay park fees. It would then have crossed through the Serengeti National Park and we would also have had to pay fees for that and all up it would have cost us $240 US.

We passed through the Masai Plains and John remarked how it looked exactly like he remembered it from geography at school. The men were wrapped in their red shawls and carrying their knobbed sticks looking after the cattle. The corrals near the house were made of tree branches standing up and rammed into the ground next to the round mud houses covered with thatch.

Some of the land was being cultivated for corn or maize while other plots already had corn with flower heads. All cultivation was done by hand and we saw a lot of children hoeing. On the paths to the fields we would pass women with a cloth on their head and their hoe balanced on that as they headed off to work or home.

The bus only stopped once for the toilet and something to eat and then only for 20 minutes in Singida. Most of the towns we picked up people were pretty run down dusty places. It rained in the afternoon and water came in from the top of the windows and through the ill fitting sliding windows. I managed to redirect the rain from soaking my seat by sticking plastic bags in the cracks. We passed through Nzega and Shinyanga before finally arriving 15 hours later at Mwanza at 9pm.

We checked into a room at the St Dominics Pastoral Centre. John had found the place on the Lonely Planet Forum and it was very nice, quiet (no call to prayers waking us) and a short walk from Lake Victoria and the city centre. Our room was in the three storey wing and we looked down on a lovely grassed area. The room was huge and we spread out and caught up on some maintenance to our gear and gave everything a good scrub after the dusty roads.



We enjoyed Mwanza very much. There was not much to see for tourists but we walked around the lake and watched the locals swimming, washing themselves and their clothes, checked out the port where they loaded dried fish and bananas.

These enormous storks flew over the dried fish on racks ever hopeful that they would be able to grab a takeaway. It is incredible that such a huge bird can glide on the thermals and they are everywhere flying over the city accompanied by the cawing black crows.

The lake has bilharzia but it doesn't deter the locals from drinking the water or going in it to fish or paddle their boats.

These colourful lizards were sunning themselves on the rocks around the lake.

The Pastoral centre was busy everyday with seminars on pediatric care for HIV patients, counselling care workshops and other courses. Some were attended by locals while others stayed in the guest rooms with us.

We met Gothard, a 70 year old German man, who was working as a volunteer at a Dutch orphanage in Ghana. He developed an interest in the country when his daughter went as an exchange student from school. He goes every year for several months at a time and helps with building things the orphanage needs. His last project was a tank stand. We were happy to get information on travel in the country as we plan to go there next year. It was also good to meet someone closer to our ages as there are not many oldies like us backpacking, although Godhard was flying to Moshi.

After a restful time and no touts we were ready to head off to Rwanda. We had to get up at 3.30am and a driver from St Dominics took us to the bus station to catch our 5am bus ride. However we beat the bus there and it finally arrived at 5.30am . Our first stop was to drive onto a ferry that took us across the lake and then onto the Rwanda border.

The ferry

There were two Frenchmen on the bus with us and we shared a taxi from the end of the bus run to the border. The bus headed off towards the Burundi border. At the border we were able to get a visa but the Frenchmen were refused entry to Rwanda as there are some problems between the two governments. The guys were supposed to have used the online visa service to get their visas. We had to pay $60 US for a two week visa but were told that in January the visas will be free for Kiwis.

Moshi / Arusha, Tanzania

Got a brand new ferry back to Dar es Salaam. There were two safari truck tour groups on the ferry and we briefly chatted to a Kiwi couple from Christchurch who were traveling with his parents. They were wearing NZ in Gallipoli teeshirts so it was easy to recognise them as Kiwis.

Spent a night back in Jambo hotel and bought a ticket for Moshi before going to bed. The bus office was just a short walk from the hotel and we were able to get on the 6.00am bus to the main bus station outside town and transfer to an 8.00am air conditioned bus there. The streets are so congested that no buses run from downtown after 7am. At the Ubongo bus station the touts wanted us to pay extra for our bags but we had asked at the office and they said bags were included in the price so we got rid of the touts.

We can't work out how they get paid other than trying to fleece money from backpackers, and there are not so many of them compared with the locals who take the buses. They work as a pack and try to intimidate you into paying, all yelling and screaming the same thing one after another at you. Aggressive advertising to the max.

It was a pretty comfortable ride to Moshi. Not far outside Dar we saw lots of Masai men herding their cattle. They are recognisable as they are very dark, tall, and wear red and or purple shawls. It seems lions don't like red so this protects them from lions. None of them were wearing their jewelery like you see them in the travel magazine photos. They all wear sandals, made either from plastic or handmade from car tyre casing. They wear a knife in a sheath tied to their waist and carry a stick with a large knot on the top. Their villages have mud and thatch rondavels with pens for their long-horned cows to go into at night.
This city boy is so noticeable amongst the western dressed locals.

We were told that the city Masai are often employed as security guards as they are very strong.
We met several Masai at the Moshi market and they were all selling herbs and potions. One guy took us by the arm and told us all about the herbs in his language and then wrapped some dry bark and powders up in a piece of newspaper and popped it into John's shirt pocket. He was so funny. I showed him John's bald patch on his head and asked if he had anything for that. He laughed as I don't think the Masai men go bald at all!

On the road to Moshi were acres and acres of fields of sisal and several factories for processing it into rope.

Moshi is popular for tourists as it is where they can fly into and get guides to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. As the rains have begun the number of tourists wanting to walk are down so we were escorted to our hotel by two touts who wanted to guide us. We thought we would have had a lot more than two. I had a head cold and John had had diarrhoea so there was no way we would be fit enough to walk. We only saw a brief view of Mt Kilimanjaro as it was covered in fog or rain most of our stay and it would have been like walking in the mountains in NZ in winter and not at all enjoyable.

Many places in Moshi were closed for the Eid Mubarak, a Muslim festival. We saw families walking in the streets in the evening in the new clothes they had got for the festival.

From Moshi we caught a small local bus to Arusha. We were able to find a spotlessly clean hotel not far from the bus depot. Our room was cleaned everyday and we got fresh sheets and towels as well as new boxes of soap and rolls of toilet paper. This has never happened in a budget hotel before. The rate also included a breakfast of local fruit, an egg and toast, and hot drinks. The only down side was that the large local mosque was across the street and the first call to prayer at 4.30 sounded like it was broadcast from the balcony outside our room.

It is common in Africa to build large buildings but only complete the ones that you have leased or are using, so the rest of the building stays open to the elements like this one. We saw lots of partly constructed buildings in Arusha and some didn't have any levels completed at all and the concrete was going black with mould and plants were growing where the birds had dropped seeds.


When I travelled in Egypt, Sudan, and Kenya 34 years ago I saw many street machinists like these. This was the first time that we had seen tailors on the streets in Southern Africa. The treadle machines are made in China and the fabrics are usually tradition patterns made in Tanzania. Many of the womens' colourful outfits have words on them and we were told that if you translated them they would be local proverbs.

At a roundabout with an Independence monument were groups of gospel singers dressed in matching outfits singing and dancing. They spent the whole day repeating their moves as a local guy videoed different groups doing different routines. Although it was a Muslim holiday there seemed to be lots of Christian groups celebrating too. For several days we could hear singing and trumpeters cruising the streets playing gospel music.

Arusha was not a very nice city. It was dirty, dusty/muddy with smelly drains and loads of touts (flycatchers as they are locally known). There were many beggars lining the streets and we could identify those with leprosy as they had no toes and stump fingers. The electricity was off for most of the day and sometimes many hours at night so we always had to take a torch with us where ever we went. It was not a good place to eat meat with so little chance to refrigerate food. We both ended up with tummy bugs as a result although we tried to eat vegetarian meals or eat at places with generators.

It rained a lot each day and luckily we had a nice room with tables and chairs where we could sit and read or do online research.

We met a Belgian guy staying at the hotel who was a chef. He had contracts to teach staff in new hotels how to cook French and Italian food. He spent 3 months working with the kitchen staff. He had learnt that he had to get paid 70% of his contract before he commenced work or else he would not see any money at all. Sometimes he returned to the kitchen a few months later and always found that they didn't do the things he had taught them and they had become lazy once they had to do things on their own.

From our hotel window we were able to see Mt Meru but we never got to see it without clouds or rain. We wanted to only stay one night in Arusha but found the bus we wanted to take to was booked up for 3 days. We decided to do a cultural tour and visit a Masai market but there were none happening at the time we were in town so we walked about the city and when it was raining spent time checking out places further ahead online. We had planned to go to Burundi from Tanzania but after checking some of the government advisory web sites we found that there had been murders along the route we wanted to take so abandoned the idea of going there. The only safe place was in the capital and then not at night. All countries bordering The Congo are not safe and especially those towns near the border. We read a newspaper article about a 9 year old albino boy who had been murdered and his genitals cut off as they believe they have magical powers. The article said the murderers came across the border from Tanzania to get the boy.

It is popular to go from Arusha to the Serengeti National Park and Ngorogoro Crater, but as we have seen many parks and animals we have decided not to go. The parks here in Tanzania are also very expensive as the government tries to get as much foreign currency as it can. We have decided that we will save our money and try to see the gorillas in Rwanda instead which costs $500us per day per person in park fees alone!

Zanzibar, the Spice Island, Tanzania.

There is quite a bit of rain now on Zanzibar and when it rains it really buckets down. However we managed to book a Spice tour and get a day with no rain. Two van loads of us headed off to the local marketplace to get supplies for the meal we would get for lunch.

We headed out of town and stopped at a coconut plantation where the guide told us 60% of the land is owned by the government and the balance is privately owned. The plantation had a few plants of the spices the guide wanted to show us growing in between the palms as it was a demonstration garden for tourists. The farms where they grow spices would usually only have one or two types growing and this way we could see several at once.
Faud, the guide, beside a pepper vine. The different kinds of pepper, green, red, black, come from the different stages of maturity and white pepper comes from taking the outside skin off the peppercorn.

The vanilla flowers once a year and has a flower related to the orchid family. A it produces beans only once a year it is very expensive.


The clove is the most commonly grown spice here and the government controls the clove plantations.
Here you can see the clove flower which will now turn into a red fruit with a seed. On either side of the flower are the cloves we know and they are picked before the flower comes.

We tasted curry leaves, and lemongrass (aka citronella) and picked cardamon pods. Faud sliced pieces of cinnamon bark off the trees so we could smell it.

It was interesting to learn about annatto, a fruit that looks like a rambuttan ( a red spiky fruit that is common in Asia), it was split open and its bright red seeds crushed. It is a natural dye used in the olden days for lip stick and today as a food colouring.

None of the spices are indigenous having been brought to Zanzibar by the traders from India and the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia). We also saw, pineapples, star fruit and jack fruit.


From the plantation we visited the sultan's wife's private bath house, hammam. Twice a week she was taken the 10kms or so to have bath as she didn't want to share with 90 odd other people.



After a short stop to taste some fruit and get hassled by begging children and young boys asking for tips we stopped at a stall where we could buy packets of ground spices. The Europeans bought packets for Christmas gifts while I chose a rice masala to try one day when we cook for ourselves.

A meal of chapati, rice, a vegetable stew, and a local green vegetable called spinach was served. We sat under a palm shelter and ate sitting on mats in a small village. The meal was supposed to contain the spices we had seen in the plantation but no one told us what was in the dish but it was yummy.

We met some interesting people in the group. Raul was a 70 year old pediatrician from Brazil and asked us to visit him when we go to the World Cup there. He was heading home to fund raise $10,000 to build a school for some Masai people.

Dorothy was from Atlanta and belonged to a group called the International Women Judges' Association. She was being shown around by a Ugandan woman from the group who worked in Arusha. Dorothy was full of life and probably in her 80s.

Along with some young people from Belgium and Germany we finished the day off at a quiet local beach before heading back to Stone Town for banana and nutella pancakes and ice cream.

Zanzibar, Tanzania

The hotel in Dar es Salaam was near the ferry terminal so we walked down to get a ferry ticket to Zanzibar Town on Zanzibar Island. Walking to the ferry area is like a minefield of touts. they leap out from all sorts of places and want to sell safaris, city tours, ferry tickets, bus tickets or get you taxis. They are pretty persistent as well. Two touts vying for business from two different companies start arguing over you as they try to steer you to their chosen offices. We knew which company we had to go with as we had checked it with the hotel so were not going to be swayed by the desperate bantering. We are not sure how the system works here in Tanzania, because we don't pay the touts directly and we are not charged extra on the tickets to cover their services. We think they maybe employed by the company. At the bus stations there maybe 10 or 12 touts chasing people for the one bus company which seems a lot of expense when customers know who they will travel with anyway. However, it does keep a lot of men employed, well dressed, and speaking good English. They also hustle the locals so they are not just there for the tourists like us.

The ferry ride was pretty good and there were not many people on the boat. As has been the trend in the buses they had several TVs showing DVDs of American movies. Even though the actors were speaking English it was still subtitled in English and there were no subtitles in Swahili.

Zanzibar has its own government so we had to pass through immigration with our passports, fill in an arrival form, pick up a departure form, and get a stamp in our passport. The majority of the Zanzibarian population is Muslim although you can see the different mix of the descendants of the islanders. Traders from Persia settled on the island in the 8th century. Between the 12th and 15th centuries slaves, gold, ivory and wood were exported and spices, glassware, and textiles were imported. In the 16th century the Portuguese controlled it. The Omani Arabs were next in the 16th century and it became so prosperous that the Sultan of Oman relocated his court here in the 1840s. In 1862 Zanzibar became independent from Oman and the sultans ruled under the protection of the British. In 1963 it became independent forming a fragile union with the new United Republic of Tanzania.



Some of the streets were wall to residential blocks that looked like they came out of the Soviet Union.

These trucks fill up in the market and head all over the island and are known as daladalas and the locals jam in on bench seats set out on the truck deck. The majority of the vehicles used for transport are imported secondhand vehicles from Japan as they drive on the same side of the road. The same reason we have so many in NZ as well.

We stayed in a guest house not far from the ferry and opposite some of the port warehouses in a dusty/muddy dark street. The place was an old house about 4 floors high. The room was very nice with a huge bed with a net hanging over a fret worked frame. On the top floor was a roof lounge/dining area where we had a great breakfast, could catch up with other guests, watch soccer on a snowy TV, use the internet and have a drink in the evening.

From our bedroom window we could see a local very poor family go about their daily activities. In the morning a young woman in a cotton sari would set a huge pot of porridge over a charcoal fire and from about 5.30 on men would drift in to eat breakfast. A little later women and children would arrive. I was snarled at when I tried to take a photo so didn't persevere. The girl and her family lived in a small area in the back of another guesthouse and had no electricity so cooking, and laundry was carried out on a concrete area outside the door to their accommodation which was also the path we needed to use to come and go from our place. In the evening, the woman, her parents or other relatives, and about 5 children would prepare the evening food. They had two burners going and in one, the oldest woman would fry half circles of pastry dough until they browned and puffed up. The young girl and the children would roll small pieces of dough into thin strips and then twirl them to make a plait. These would be fried and then rolled in sugar and we saw these being eaten with the breakfast porridge. We think the dough puffs were sold at the market in the evening. This routine went on each day we were staying and probably continues year after year.

In the evenings we would wander down to the waterfront seaside area called Forodhani Park. It was completed in 2009 and is a pleasant area with cobbles, gardens, a children's playground and seating. Stall holder's are licensed and have to rent a space from the council where they set up their food stalls only in the evenings. They wear chef's dress and all stalls have vinyl tablecloths in blue and white. This guy sold Zanzibarian pizzas. On the small circle of dough he put a dried circle of dough and topped it with a combination of vegetables and meat. He cracked an egg in the middle, folded it to make a square and fried it on both sides. He also make chocolate and banana and other sweet pizzas for about $2 NZ. Beside this guy was a cane juice seller who made wonderful juice with limes and crushed ginger. You could also buy all kinds of seafood that was prepared, and precooked on skewers and once you selected your combinations it was reheated on a charcoal grill. There were many stalls selling exactly the same things done in exactly the
way and looked like they had been trained by the same person. It was also pretty expensive to buy grilled meat or seafood and the first night there were mostly Western tourists but the next night there were a lot more Africans but they were probably tourists as well.

The old part of Zanzibar Town is called Stone Town and there is a huge renovation and restoration project going on financed by UNESCO. A few buildings were wrapped up and scaffolded. Most of the narrow streets in the old town are not signed so we wandered around looking for the old bath house, cathedral and palace.

In the sea were dhows as well as small boats that looked like Chinese sampans.

I ended up with a head cold that caused me a lot of discomfort in my ears so I was hoping it would not get worse because flu like symptoms are a sign of malaria. If I had got worse I would have had to find a clinic and get a blood test. Luckily with some throat lozenges, antihistamines, and cane juice with lime and ginger it improved.

We met 2 interesting guests in the guesthouse. One guy was from Hungary and the other a woman from Slovenia. They worked for the EU as election observers as a few days before Tanzania had had their elections. One of the requirements to be an observer is to speak French, English and Portuguese. They do 3 or 4 observation contracts per year and sit around the rest of the year waiting for more contracts.