Apart from Victoria Falls, there wasn't anything else in Zambia that we wanted to see, so we had a long journey to northern Tanzania for our next adventure.
From Livingston we took a bus to Lusaka, Zambia's capital, a rather uninspiring place, we have to admit! Then we chose to take the train from Lusaka to Dar es Salaam, the capital of Tanzania. It would have been quicker to take the bus, but travelling First Class in a sleeper compartment on the train was much cheaper and far more comfortable. In fact, we lucked out and had a four-berth compartment to ourselves for the entire 48-hour journey. The train ride proved to be a good way to see northern Zambia and southern Tanzania. We even got to ride through one of Tanzania's premier parks, the Selous game reserve. It was pretty neat to spot giraffes, wildebeasts, impalas and warthogs from the train. The train moved slowly and stopped at many stations, where there was lots of activity with people and goods moving on and off the train; women in brightly coloured dresses balancing huge loads of bananas, sweet potatoes, and all kinds of vegetables in trays on their heads, which they sold to passengers on the train. A truely memorable experience.
We spent one night in Dar es Salaam before catching a bus to Moshi at the base of Mount Kilimanjaro. Dar is very different from the rest of Africa as it has a strong Arab and muslim influence, we heard the call to prayer from our hotel room. It's also much more humid; we had our first rain since arriving in Africa - a tropical downpour.
Our home for 48 hours, a First Class, four-berth compartment on the Lusaka - Dar es Salaam "Express" train. This train ride covered close to 2000 km (that's an average of roughly 40 km/hr!) and took us from central Africa to the Indian Ocean.
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