Trip to the coast

I am not the biggest planner.  I know that surprises you. But I love to travel with only a vague idea of what to do/ where to go/ how to go about doing it, it leaves space for the random adventures that come your way. I feel Hana has gotten a crash course in my way of living care free and sadly, sometimes it comes back to bite you in the rear.

I think it was Thursday night before we decided early Friday morning (yes the next day) we were going to take off to Nairobi and find a bus to the coast and explore Mombasa and some beach for a quick 3 day weekend trip. We did a quick pack up, and left for Nairobi at 6am on a matatu. When we got to Nairobi we had a small idea of where or how to catch a bus to Mombasa but the great thing about Africa is, if you just walk down a main road people are literally going to walk up to you and offer you anything you could want. And that is precisely what happened. Not 5 min of walking down a main road in down town Nairobi a man walked up and asked if we were looking for a bus to Mombasa ( I kid you not, this is how they do things here).  The bus was REALLY low end, tickets cost about $5 to take us 8 hours to the coast. The bus was rather empty so we asked when it was leaving “very soon” was the answer (oh how I have come to hate the word soon in Africa) I also wanted to make sure it was a direct bus so I asked about number of stops. They said “2 stops only” (never believe this answer either in Africa).  So hana and I satisfied with the answers paid our tickets and hoped on the empty bus around 9am with his assurance that we should be there before 4pm leaving Hana and I enough time to figure out where we were going once we got to Mombasa. Well 2 hours later we had not moved yet. Shortly after that the bus moved…. to a gas station, where we waited about another hour to finish filling up most the seats on the bus. Once were pretty packed in with people, cargo, live chickens ( I can not make this stuff up, the lady in front of us had about 3 live chickens under her seat), we were finally on our way, I think it was about 15 min after that that the boy across the aisle threw up, nice. Hana and I had packed PB&J supplies for bus ride snacks so we munched, and read and slept, keeping most our valuables on our laps and the rest of our things on the shelf above our heads.  

You can already assume that our “direct bus” that would get us there before 4pm was not all it was promised to be. We made TONS of stops, for anyone on the side of the road who wanted on or anyone on the bus who wanted off – any where. We finally got into Mombasa well past dark, maybe around 8pm. We were kind of caught off guard when it was finally the last stop, there had been so many stops, we both had just passed out into a deep sleep, and we were just on the side of the road somewhere in Mombasa. But a fellow passenger woke us up and we gathered out things and that’s when we realized that Hana’s Mac laptop was missing. Someone had stolen it from us while we were sleeping. Ya, it really sucked. Losing a computer is so much more than just the cost of replacing it. Its all the documents, the photos, the videos, that are gone forever. Then its trying to figure out how to live without a computer. The magnitude of having that laptop stolen would only grow more and more. We were pretty upset, but found a taxi and headed to a hostel right in old town. There are few people in this world who have such a great attitude and perspective on life as Hana. While it was really crappy that her computer was stolen, she realized there was nothing we could do about it and she said she would rather not worry about it and just enjoy our weekend get away. So we dropped our bags at the hostel and went out to find one of the main reasons we decided to come to the coast – good Indian food.

Mobasa is an incredible town with a very rich history, it was owned by first tribes of the Swahilli who pretty much ran the African slave trade, then some sultans, then the Portuguese took over it, then the Muslim Arabs, then the English who populated the area with many Indians, then in the mid 1900’s it was given back to the Kenyan people. Because of the many conquers, and religions and it being the prime stop on the east coast of Africa on the trade routes plus a beautiful coast line the town has a culture unlike anything I have ever experienced.  Hana and I spent Saturday wandering through old town, a mix of alleyways, winding cart paths, and people living basically on top of each other they are so packed in. We went to the spice market, and to Fort Jesus a huge fort built on the shore that is made completely from coral, we even wandered into a hindu temple and followed an adorable little barefoot girl to pet the cow and feed the birds by the pounds. It was a sensory overload, the sites, smells, constant commotion everywhere, the Muslim prayers at full volume, everything from tuk-tuks to donkeys to bikes to camels on the roads. It was incredible to see how many different cultures and religions for the most part live very peacefully together. It was hot too. Hana and I have become so used to Naivasha perfect weather everyday, that we forgot what heat felt like. It was SO hot. By the afternoon we were ready to hit the beach.

We caught the ferry to the south of Mombasa wanting to go camp on one of the most famous beaches on the Kenyan coast, Diani. It is hard sometimes to be a white person during the low season here in Kenya. When we got off the ferry there was an almost full out brawl over who would be our taxi to Diani beach. We quickly hoped in the tuk tuk offering the best price and promising that he knew exactly were we could camp (another thing Kenyans say but never mean). We were dropped off at some expensive hotel, not sure where the beach even was. Being the low season there were not many taxis or matatus around so Hana and I decided to just start walking in the direction of the good looking curry place we had passed. While on our walk, our very very hot walk, we met a local and asked him about places to camp on the beach. He got really excited and told us to follow him, he knew a couple places. He took us off the main road back into a very poor village/slum area, through the houses and then just stopped at one point and said here, we had 2 American guys camp here once before. And pointed to an alleyway between the houses where a pile of trash was.  (again I am not making this up). The villagers had gathered around anxious to find out what 2 mazungus were doing back there. We tried as politely as we could to refuse his offer no matter how good of a price he tried to bargain with us. We told him we were looking for something on the beach, and he said his uncle lived on the beach, and there was some land next to him that we cold camp on and he excitedly started leading the other direction. By this time Hana and I were very hungry, very hot, and not too excited to see this guys next recommendation. We decided to not follow him to his 2^nd “campsite”.

Ok side note we finally made it to this curry place, and it was pretty good, but the garlic nan was one of the best things I have ever tried in my life. And there we found out about an actual campsite right by the beach called, you will never believe it “Diani Beach campsite”. When we finally got there it was already 5pm but the campsite was prefect and safe, and real close to the beach and the beach was VERY beautiful. White sand, palm trees, crystal clear water, it was very nice. That night we had dessert in Ali Babbas cave. It’s a natural cave made in the coral that is now this incredible restaurant lit by candles all over the coral cave wall. At this point I should probably mention the lack of pictures- my camera was stolen, and Hana’s camera charger was stolen, so this whole trip we were camera-less, so use your imagination. The walk back to the campsite along the beach was beautiful there was plenty of light from the moon and you could watch the thousands of crabs chasing the tide.

We got up VERY early the next morning to watch sunrise on the beach and ended up playing soccer with a bunch of locals on the beach. Not to shabby way to start the day. Then we loaded up in a tour van as we were headed to the last island of Kenya for some sailing, snorkeling, scuba diving, and real sea food. We took a old wooden dowel sail boat out to the last island in Kenay before you hit Tanzania. I got to go scuba diving while Hana snorkled along the reaf. As always, scuba diving is incredible. The colors, the variety, the feeling of being 60 ft underwater, its something else. As we started our dive there were a couple dolphins not 10 ft from us, it was really neat to see them swim around from under the water. Huge sea turtles are found in that area, sadly, we didn’t see any. For lunch they brought us this island where we were served fresh fish, crab and lobster right on the beach. It was very nice. We even got a quick tour of the village that lives on that island and told that next time we can come camp on their island.

Back in Diani we spent a bit more time just laying on the beach before we needed to go to Mombasa to catch a night bus back to Nairobi. On the way we met a guy who is a full time professional acrobat. His crew has traveled the world performing amazing stunts. He was kind enough to help us not only get to the Mombasa bus station, but helped us find a much safer, better bus to get us back to Nairobi.

Ah the ups and downs of Africa. It is a never stop adventure here.