After a week in Arusha it is time to move on. The next destination is Mwanza, Tanzania's second largest city which is located on Lake Victoria.

I had to take a bus for this leg of the journey. The tourist office had provided the name of a bus operator and the scheduled journey time was 12 hours. I booked a seat, receiving a ticket stating that the meeting time was 11.30 for a 12.00 departure. I turned up as directed, to learn that Swahili's have their own time system and that 12.00 on a ticket actually means 6.00am. After some choice words, it was arranged that I should catch the bus on the following day. The omens were already looking bleak. The next day I arrive at the bus station, this time at the appointed hour, but am dismayed to note that the bus is about 50 years old ad has certainly seen better days. It's dented, beaten up, dirty, noisy, cramped and probably doesn't have an original part from its original manufacture. In short the bus is a patchwork of parts from buses that have been more fortunate than this one in that they have been allowed to pass into bus heaven.

I do some math in my head. Do I really want to visit Mwanza? Can the bus make it? Can my contorted body make it? I decide to get off the bus and cancel this part of the trip, but inexplicably I stay in my seat. The bus sets off....

An hour into the journey the inevitable happens. The entire bus is filled with thick, black, choking smoke. Passengers cough, children cry and even the chickens squawk their disapproval. The bus grinds to a halt it's engine beyond repair. We wait in the burning Sun in the middle of the desert for three hours waiting for a replacement bus to show up. During this time I get talking to a journalist from Germany called Judith who is doing a piece on a German boat that was sunk in the First World War and is now used as a ferry on Lake Tanganyika.

Eventually the replacement bus arrives, but whilst the original bus seats five abreast the replacement only seats four abreast, More math. Our cramped bus journey just got a bit more cramped and the prospect of 11 hours in 38c heat (there is no aircon of course) is a daunting one. I have decided to stand, but then for some reason I am ushered to an empty seat at the front of the bus behind the driver. Surprised by this fortunate turn of events I eventually learn that this seat is called the death seat as there is little chance of survival (no seats belts!) if the bus crashes. Ordinarily this would not have bothered me, but these buses crash all the time and the road is littered with the burnt out carcasses of buses and cars.

The good news is that the bus only breaks down once more, for around an hour, during the rest of the journey. The trip is the most excruciating I have ever experienced. 200km of the journey is over bumpy, dusty, dirty tracks as the road has not been sealed. We have travelled for 17 hours and the bus driver has taken less than 30 minutes of rest during the entirety of the trip.

The hostel in Mwanza was nothing to write home about (except I just did). It cost a mere $3.5 per night and has complimentary brown stains and bloody handprints on the walls of the room. Low ebb best describes my feelings at this point.

I'm determined to make the most of things so I get a ferry a ferry to the remote island of Ukerewe. The trip across Lake Victoria is good, the Lake itself is massive, almost like a sea, and at one point it is impossible to see land whilst on the Lake. The journey is 3.5 hours, not 2 hours as indicated by the guide book, so I only have half an hour to look around if I am going to catch the only ferry back. Ukerewe reminds me of the unspoilt part of Zanzibar, very small, little contact with the World, basic, but at the same time wonderful in its own way.

The next day I check out Mwanza, but there is little to see. Few tourists venture this way and the city is functional and 'real'. What it lacks in tourists it makes up for in mosquitoes who make a banquet out of me. I resolve to take more mosquito precautions as spending weeks recovering from malaria would be very bad news indeed.