We left at noon today headed towards Bujumbura, the capital of Burundi, but not before stopping off at the candy store to spend al our remaining Tanzanian shillings on Cadbury’s chocolate. We headed out of Kigoma on the worst road we’d driven on so are. It can’t even be called a road – it’s more like a large dirt path that people walk on and it was just a coincidence that it was just wide enough for our truck. No road maintenance (pipe dream) so everyone in the back of the truck was forced to take a firm grip onto something stable as not to get thrown out of their seats.
It got really deep and muddy at one point and when Mick attacked each mud slide with some accelerator the truck would fishtail and rock and roll more than ever. At times the truck was at a very jaunted angle and we didn’t know if it was going to do an imitation of the inside of a tumble driver or not. It was definitely one of our hell rides on the entire safari
We made it to the Tanzania/Burundi border a few hours later but the immigration and customs guys were both back in town drinking so we were forced to turn the truck around and go find the two officers so we could get out of Tanzania. We entered Burundi with no problems and drove for a few hours before stopping near a small village to free-camp for the night. As usual the locals gathered to watch the “mzungu” circus put up their tents and cook diner. I’d had a few (two) Primus en route to Burundi and as both Burundi and Zaire were Belgian colonies (and are solely French speaking) I thought I’d go over and practice my French. I had a chat with a few of the locals who told me that they don’t start learning English in school until they’re sixteen or seventeen years old. I chatted some more for practice before crashing in our tent – remember I’d hit the two Primus mark!