Sleepy Swahili trading town — Tendaguru dinosaur fossils, dhow culture, and the Kilwa coast unvisited
Lindi is a small coastal town on the southern Tanzanian coast — quieter and less developed even than Mtwara, with a compact Swahili old town of coral-stone buildings, a deep natural harbour, and an unhurried rhythm that reflects the town's faded trading-post past. The real reason to come here is the Tendaguru fossil site, 100km inland — one of the world's most significant dinosaur fossil beds, where German expeditions in 1909–1913 excavated Giraffatitan brancai, the largest mounted dinosaur skeleton in the world (now in Berlin's Museum für Naturkunde), and a staggering diversity of late Juras…
Lindi was a significant Arab-Swahili trading settlement from at least the 18th century — a natural harbour town dealing in ivory, wax, and enslaved people brought from the interior by Yao traders. German colonial administration made Lindi the provincial capital of southern German East Africa; it was here that the remarkable Tendaguru dinosaur expedition (1909–1913) was organized, the largest paleontological excavation in Africa, which transported 225 tonnes of fossil material to Berlin. The Brachiosaurus hall of Berlin's Museum für Naturkunde — housing a 26-metre mounted Giraffatitan — is sti…