Getting to Zanzibar

Car, bus, train, taxi, foot, ferry and then finally we reached Zanzibar four days later! A bit of a journey to say the least but it was fun and very much all worth it. The train was the longest, most exciting and also most (a little bit anyway) frustrating part of the journey. The ‘Tazara Express train’ leaves from a place from Kapiri Mposhi, a few hours north east of Lusaka, and aside from the train station it is not a memorable town, particularly because like Mazabuka it is a major stopping off point for truckers, which has consequences in terms of prostitution and HIV and AIDS. The three of us (Marco, Davide and I) had a first class compartment to ourselves for supposedly the next two nights, which sounds pretty luxurious and compared to the cramped, sleeping upright conditions in third class we were very lucky. So we read, played scrabble and connect 4, listened to music, wandered around the train, day dreamed and gazed out of the window, had a few drinks at the bar and ate in the dining car as the train chugged along, wandered around the numerous stations that we stopped at, and then repeated all of this activity again and again. At times it felt like the journey would never end and then we were in Dar es Salaam only nine hours late. And by lunchtime on Christmas Eve we had taken the two hour ferry from Dar and set foot on the beautiful island of Zanzibar.