Rutana

After leaving Malawi myself and another traveller Jonathan spent a few long days on busses crossing western Tanzania to get to Burundi. With only a 3 day visa in hand we only had limited time to cross Burundi to get to Rwanda. Luckily we had Jerome, a fantastic Burundian guy that helped us to navigate the country quickly. On day one we hired a car to take us to the source of the river Nile. There seem to be several sources of the Nile depending on what country you're in, but Burundi seem convinced that theirs is the right one as it is the furthest from the source! While we were there we bumped into a load of teenagers on a school trip, and we ended up in the same place as them for the other Burundian sights that we went to see too! We bumped into them later that afternoon at Karere Waterfalls , a series of beautiful waterfalls in southern Burundi.
After a night in a very local hotel and some good local food, we set off to see the Royal Drummers of Burundi. The drummers are apparently world renowned and have travelled all over the world to perform. They energetically played for 40 min in the burning heat, and the large group of students really added to the atmosphere as they cheered along and ended up dancing with them at the end. They were well worth the effort of coming to Burundi to see them!
We then headed to Bujumbura, the capital of Burundi and wandered around the city a bit. Finally we had a driving tour around Bujumbura to get more of an idea of it before saying goodbye to Jerome and heading for the Rwanda border.Read more