One of the major tourist attractions is Rwanda is Lake Kivu, one of the African Great Lakes, and Rwandans and foreign tourists alike vacation on its shores.1 The most popular holiday town along the lake is Gisenyi, with off-the-beaten-path Kibuye also being touted as a lovely location. We decided to visit both of them, starting with Kibuye and then making our way up to Gisenyi.
Continue reading Relaxing Along the Shores of Lake Kivu (Or, Avoiding Limnic Eruptions)
We were smitten with Kigali from the moment of our arrival. The setting amongst countless hills, clean, well-lit streets, the cosmopolitan feel – after our long days of travel across Central and Northern Tanzania, Kigali felt like a veritable paradise.
What’s that you say? You want to travel overland from Mwanza, Tanzania to Kigali, Rwanda but you’re having trouble finding information on the journey? Look no farther: Here is how to get from Mwanza to Kigali in 14 (not-so-easy) steps.1
After checking out the rock paintings in Kondoa, we planned to head northwest to Mwanza, Tanzania’s second largest city, for a stopover on our way to Rwanda.
It was another early morning when we left Kondoa. Unfortunately, the best (least worst?) routing to Mwanza from Kondoa required us to first backtrack to Dodoma. Unsurprisingly, the road back to Dodoma was just as bumpy as it had been on the way up to Kondoa. If anything, the ride was more bumpy because our seats didn’t appear to be permanently attached to the bus – so when we went over a bump, it wasn’t just us flying out of our seats, it was us flying out of our seats with the seats flying along behind us.
We arrived in Dodoma mid-morning, and our plan was to forge on to Mwanza that same afternoon. Our guidebook indicated that Mwanza-bound buses that originated in Dar es Salaam passed through Dodoma around noon, and we set about looking for tickets on one of those buses.1
Pop quiz: What is the capital of Tanzania? Dar es Salaam? Nope!1 The correct answer is Dodoma.
Next question: What is there to do in Dodoma? Not much! (Sorry Dodomans, Dodomites?)
After a couple of days in the big city, we left Dar on a late morning bus heading to Dodoma,2 where we arrived just before sunset and spent the night. Our plan was to catch a bus the next morning heading further north to Kondoa and then visit some of the rock paintings in the surrounding area, which have been listed as an UNESCO World Heritage site.3 Continue reading Checking Out the Kondoa Rock Art
We received no shortage of warnings about Dar es Salaam. Like Johannesburg (and many other large African cities), it has something of an unsavory reputation, at least amongst travelers. The warnings we had received in advance of our trip to Jo’burg were largely generalized, stock warnings (“don’t carry unnecessary valuables,” “don’t walk around with a bag,” “don’t walk around at night”) – the warnings we received about Dar, however, were disturbingly specific first-person accounts: a couple who had stayed at Mayoka Village in Nkhata Bay at the same time as us had been robbed by their taxi driver; a group of Peace Corps volunteers we met in Iringa warned us about aggressive thieves at the bus station.
Consequently, we arrived in Dar es Salaam with our guards up. I’m pleased to report that we had no problems whatsoever in Dar. We walked around downtown, used taxis, and rode the pubic minibuses without having a single incident.
Our visit to Dar was split in two parts (Dar I and Dar II) and sandwiched our trip to Zanzibar.1 Continue reading A Double Visit to Dar es Salaam (Or, a Zanzibar Sandwich)
