It’s nice to wake up in front of our airport gate, again.
For the 3rd time and second to last time back in Addis Ababa as our home base for our Central Africa trip, it was another 2 hour and 45 minute flight from Addis Ababa and this time to Burundi, our Central African odyssey that ends here at the capital of Bujumbura.
Where USA passport holders had lost the ability for a visa on arrival back in Bangui in the Central African Republic, we gained one recently in Burundi at Bujumbura airport. You can apply ahead online to receive a QR code voucher to speed things along, or simply apply on the spot at one of the visa counters to your left when you arrive.
Once they take about 15-20 minutes at the first counter to fill out an application for you, they move your passport to their left along an assembly line of counters.
Your passport keeps going down the line 3 stations, where the first is to apply, the second is to pay in cash ($40 for a transit visit for stays fewer than 3 days, $90 for a 1 month visa), and the third is for an officer in uniform to stick the visa in your passport.
You then bring all of that to the counter to stamp in and have them take a photo of you.
And then you’re in baggage claims!
Waiting for the others to finish their visas, we walked around the corner to exit customs.
There we met our guide Dativa, in charge of her own tour company Ikaze Venture, who took us to our 2 cars to begin our tour.
Burundi is a land-locked nation and one of the ten least developed countries in the world with the lowest per capita GDP of any nation in the world. Its experience with colonialism began with Germany and Belgium in the early 20th century when Burundi and Rwanda was a single European colony known as Ruanda-Urundi.
Burundi then gained independence from Belgium in 1962, after which civil wars between the Hutu and Tutsi populations (as more notably exemplified by what happened in Rwanda), and a series of political assassinations followed. It was not until 2005 when a cease-fire was finally enacted and successive (and some controversial) elected presidents have since tried to rebuild the country.
After 10 minutes of driving from the airport, we were stopped briefly for the President as his militarized motorcade to pass by on their way to the airport. Lots of parallels to our foray with the president on our way to the airport exactly one year ago in the Equatorial Guinea!
We began our city tour driving by the city’s Triangle of Love, a gated park inaccessible to locals featuring 2 of Burundi’s leaders: their first democratically elected president Melchiior Ndadaye who was assassinated after 3 months in power, and their beloved Prince Louis Rwagasore who was Prime Minister for only 2 weeks before he too, was assassinated at the age of 28.
We then took a road trip south along the Lake Tanganyika, the world’s longest freshwater lake and the second deepest and largest by volume after Lake Baikal.
You can see that climate change is already causing water levels to take over the banks of the city.
As we drove further out from the city, we witnessed local life that live and die along the lake.
The largest structure happens to be a church, naturally.
Our little road trip finished at the southern town of Mugere, home to the Livingstone–Stanley Monument, built at the site where “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?” presumedly took place.
In reality, their meeting where those words were uttered took place 15 days earlier in Ujiji in Tanzania. It was then 2 weeks later where the two of them ventured here to this very location in current-day Burundi where they spent 3 days here resting at a hut provided by Chief Mukamba. Both of them went on to describe this spot as being one of their most hospitable experiences in all of Africa.
There’s also a rock that ascribes the significance of their 3 days here from November 25-27, 1871.
Colonialism just got served.
After spending half an hour here learning about its significance in history from a local French-speaking curator (with our guides translating), we returned to our cars and drove back north towards Bujumbura for our next stop at the Mausolée du Prince Louis Rwagasore (Prince Louis Rwagasore Mausoleum), a mausoleum built in memory of Burundi’s universally revered national hero and where Burundian Independence Day is celebrated annually every July 1st.
The 3 things that matter to Burundian: Imana Umwami Uburundi (God, The King, Burundi)
Our next stop, the nearby Unity Monument, built to symbolize the peace, reconciliation and solidarity among Burundi’s diverse communities after years of conflict.
From here we returned to the city center where we checked into our hotels (highly recommend the spacious, artsy studio rooms at Burundi Palace Hotel) . . .
. . . and reunited for a 6:30pm dinner at Belvedere with its elevated views overlooking Bujumbura.
Eat some brochettes that’s affectionately referred to as “je m’en fout” (means “I don’t care”), or have the local Mukeke and Sangala fish from Lake Tanganyika as you watch the rain set upon the city behind you.
Dodging a rainy downpour, I with the two sisters, Janet and Sandra, enjoyed our last dinner together of the trip with these views.
The next morning I woke up for a rooftop breakfast with Letti at 8am at the hotel, who had skipped dinner last night as she was recovering from her upper respiratory illness she had experienced during the trip.
Gooooood morning Bujumbura!
Letti and I then loaded our bags for an 8:30am pickup for the divine treat of local Burundi coffee at Bujacafe, located right next to the German consulate:
We then had a scheduled ferry adventure in Rusizi National Park, featuring hippos and crocodiles sunning themselves on the banks of the Rusizi River. The area is also where Gustave, the world’s largest Nile crocodile, has been spotted.
To get there, you first have to take a small ferry to a larger one.
And then from the smaller ferry, you board a larger ferry.
However, due to the heavy downpour of rain from last night, the whole park was getting too flooded and our later morning ferry was cancelled.
We therefore instead continued an extended city tour, visiting first the Cathédrale Regina Mundi de Bujumbura on its Sunday mass:
And although glimpsing animals within a protected national park would have been better, we were offered instead to visit the city’s downtown Musée Vivant, a small natural history museum and “zoo.” Entrance is BIF 5,000 for non-residents, which includes a guide to show you around.
Exhibits include chimpanzees, a leopard, crocodiles, birds and snakes.
For an additional BIF 10,000-40,000 per feeding, the guide will feed live rabbits and Guinea pigs to the crocodiles, leopard and snakes so you may see them in action.
After half an hour at the zoo, we briefly shopped for souvenirs at the local craft market.
And then we took a short walking tour around the larger, central market.
With plenty of time before my 4:55pm flight back to Addis Ababa, we lounged for a lunch by the beach of the lake at Eden Resort:
The local avocados here are as large as melons!
And with that, we headed off to the airport with a brief pitstop at the Primus Beer Brewery.
Quite weird to have this part come full circle. Last year when Letti and I were in Equatorial Guinea on January 12, 2024, I had received this e-mail about a sudden unexpected “wildcat” strike that was happening in all of Belgium, which had cancelled my flight out of West Africa to finish my trip. I had to go into a frenzy trying to find alternatives, ending up with a flight to Douala to Addis Ababa to Rome.
Well, exactly a year later today also on January 12, 2025, Letti just received this e-mail about a nationwide strike in Belgium, threatening to cancel her flight from this African country into Brussels from Burundi. Is this wildcat strike actually becoming an annual holiday affecting only monsooners going to Africa on January 12th?
So in the heat of rebooking (and much similar to the feverish attempts I tried to rebook my flights last year in Equatorial Guinea with nearly zero internet and data access), Letti rebooked her flight to be with me as we returned back from Burundi to Addis Ababa on the 4:55pm flight, after which she gets on THAT SAME Addis Ababa to Rome flight that I had rebooked onto exactly one year ago!
Signs of full circle on a trip like this? Signs that these “detours” are actually signs we’re heading in the right direction.
As I’m typing this in BJM airport, I must note how security into Bujumbura’s international airport is tight. This is the line to enter the airport 3 hours before departure:
After they check your passport, visa, and ticket outside, they mark down the number of each nationality entering the airport via tally marks on a piece of paper and let you in.
You might have to remind the staff here that you don’t need a visa for Addis Ababa transfers or into Europe with a USA passport, but after a little back and forth, they let us onto the check-in lines.
There’s a lounge for diplomats, and a lounge for business class ($25 to enter if flying economy):
The door to the bathroom in this lounge accidentally also leads you to become the person doing the visas.
After an hour in the lounge, we lined up last to board as business class.
While back at Addis Ababa and after a light dinner, Letti and I bid farewell at the Cloud Nine Lounge, while I finally got to experience their new showers.
Thanks to a redemption via Air Canada on a discounted mileage offer and avoiding the strike in Belgium (deep down I learned not to repeat past mistakes), I’m flying back from Addis Ababa to Paris, getting 8 hours of sleep on this flight . . .
. . . and then taking the RER B from CDG airport to Gare du Nord station for the Eurostar 9315 train to Brussels. Luckily the national strike won’t affect international trains coming in as the 9315 train continues onwards to The Nethelands. With a business class ticket for €20 more, you can access this hidden Grand Voyageur lounge at the Gare du Nord station.
Then in Brussels, I plan to take a flight to LHR once the strike ends in the evening, and then LHR back home. I’ve already written my last thoughts to the group chat, as well as a post to myself.
Just saw Letti off to her gate. I guess this is goodbye!
Now that we’ve come to the end of this journey, I just want to take a moment to thank you all for being a part of something that’s much more than just another trip. This was the last of its kind for me — the final Monsoon Diaries adventure of hopping between countries we’ve never been to before in a whirlwind, the same spirit in which my whole story began 15 years ago, before the thousands of people that found our blog.
Sharing this with you made it all the more special. You brought such great energy, trust, flexibility, patience, kinship, and camaraderie to something that could have easily felt overwhelming or frustrating without the right group of people. And of course, thank you @Brinks Rik for being there with us in spirit, introducing us to all your wonderful, relaxed, trusted, thoroughly vetted guides and ensuring our safety and security behind the scenes even when the group split up; nothing was missed.
And as for all of you, I couldn’t have asked for better companions as we ventured into the unknown together. You’ve reminded me why I started doing this in the first place—the thrill of exploration, the strength of a self-assured community, the patience when things detour inherent in what makes an adventure, and the memories we create when we take that leap of faith.
Even though this marks the end of a chapter in how I travel, it’s not goodbye forever. It’s not the end of my adventures—probably just a shift into something new. Whatever that’ll look like, hope to cross paths with you all again, wherever in the world we might land next.
Thank you, truly, for everything. 🌍💛
- At time of posting in Bujumbura, it was 27 °C - Humidity: 62% | Wind Speed: 8km/hr | Cloud Cover: downpours and baking sun