Nairobi and the Coast

The days following the Mount Kenya hike left me feeling incredibly hungry. This was not a bad thing though as on the Saturday I teamed up with a few guys from the Milimani Backpackers and headed to Kenya’s most famed restaurant, Carnivore. Not your typical travellers choice of eatery, as it costs about thirty dollars for the meal, it is definitely one of the treats that anyone visiting Kenya’s capital should experience. Much the like Rodizio restaurant’s of Brazil it is an eat as much as you can affair and see’s waiters and waitresses dressed in zebra aprons bring long skewers to your table loaded with various meats. All the classic cuts are there, beef, chicken, etc but you also get to experience some more exotic meats like crocodile and ostrich.

The following day saw the final game of the Kenyan premier football league and we decided to check out the match in Nairobi. In stark contrast to the English premier league the quality of play was atrocious. I imagine that even our local pub Sunday team would have played better and more elegant football. Nonetheless the atmosphere was great to experience. From the local kids who, whether they knew it or not, danced some incredibly lude moves to the bottle hurling thugs ion the front rows who’d put argument to the hooligans of the British leagues.

Having spent several days in Nairobi recovering it was time to press on. Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday an overnight, long haul, train departs Nairobi station for Mombasa. At the hostel I had met a Dutch guy, Lenny, who was heading the same direction. We’d booked tickets and on the Monday night we caught a taxi to the station and were soon nestled into our compartment. The train network in Kenya is a relic of the English occupancy here and the carriages themselves are around sixty years old. The train pulled out of the platform on time and as dusk turned into night we enjoyed dinner on the old, rattling, locomotive. The sleeping compartments were comfortable and waking with the rising sun the following morning we looked out over the rolling, hilly, planes of the Tsalvo national game reserve. The countryside of Kenya reminds me, in many ways, of the landscape of Brazil. Huge palm trees, green pastures and village life. The train was not the quickest though and often times would stop alongside some of the small townships. Here children would run up to the windows of the train, spying the “Mzungu” (white man) and shouting “jambo” (hello) before putting their hands out and asking for money.

 
The green lands gave way to industrial sites and rubbish tips before we arrived into Mombasa. Nairobi had been quite cold (compared to the forty degrees I’d had in Egypt) but stepping onto the concrete platform I was once again in searing heat. On the southeast coast of Kenya Mombasa is Kenya’s second largest city with a little over 650,000 inhabitants. Unlike the capital there are no high rise buildings here. The streets are packed with Tuktuks and taxis and buses. There is a real mix of cultures with Indian, Muslim and Christian faiths all present but living in complete harmony with each other.  On the way to the Mombasa Backpackers, the location of which is not the easiest to find, I was shocked by the appalling conditions in which people lived and worked on a daily basis on the Nyali road. Corrugated shanty town doesn’t cover the squalor that people exist in here. It’s a terribly sad sight, like the slums of Sao Paulo and Rio De Janeiro. The beaches on the other hand are nothing short of breath taking. Pure white, fine, sand stretches for miles in either direction and the ocean is the colour of that represented on postcards. Dazzling beauty that you have to see for yourself to believe.

I only spent one night in Mombasa to begin as I caught up with a couple of others from the hostel in Nairobi. They were heading north to the island of Lamu and I decided to join them knowing I would have to return to Mombasa before crossing the Tanzanian border. Early the next morning and we were on a bus travelling north through yet more lush, green, landscape. It was around an 8 hour journey to Lamu and after the town of Malindi, around the half way point, I was beginning to wonder why it would take so long as we had only be driving for about 2 hours or so. I soon found out when the road began to disintegrate a potholed dust track. For close to five hours we were tossed around like the salad of a gourmet restaurant’s kitchen. The port for the ferry crossing couldn’t come soon enough.

Lamu island is untouched by any motor vehicles bigger than small motorcycles and the view of Lamu town from the ferry was beautiful at sunset. All along the waterfront little wooden boats, called Dhow’s, were moored after their days fishing or snorkelling excursions. Locals sat on the harbour walls greeting the Wzungu (white man - plural) ready to guide unsuspecting travellers to various hostels where they would receive a commission.

Fine living is definitely the theme or the Lamu archipelago and the pints of pure fruit juices were exquisite, as was the fish. The town of Lamu is little bigger than a sea front parade and a couple of back streets. Roughly 3 or 4 kilometres from this cobbled street centre, where locals continually pitch the various Dhow boat adventures, is the stunning beach of Shela. Sweeping around the South west peninsula and all along the southern side of the island it is a vast paradisiacal location facing both the other islands of the archipelago and also the open Indian Ocean. Throughout the day you see people learning to windsurf, Dhow’s drifting past in the breeze and local merchants hawking wares. Our favourite of the few days was Mahmood, the stoned Lamuian whose wife bakes Samosas for him to sell on the beach. Often he would sit with us and fall asleep until we roused him to potential customers walking past…he sometimes didn’t make it to them before returning to us and sleeping again.

On the final evening of the stay on Lamu a group of us went for the sunset cruise on one of the Dhow’s. Our captain was Musini. A short, slim, Kenyan with a wide smile, reflective sunglasses and a trilby hat. Along with two other crew members he sailed us around the archipelago as the sun went down over the back of Lamu. With a gentle evening breeze the wooden vessel cruised across the calm waters with ease. Several of us had a go at "walking the plank"...walking out on the balancing beam that extended from the side of the boat. We stopped at a floating bar in the middle of the waters but unfortunately there was too much cloud on the horizon to get a stunning sunset. Nonetheless we enjoyed the sailing and we had a farewell dinner on the waterfront of the most delicious tuna fillet I have ever tasted (not complete without our mandatory fresh fruit juice).

The following morning and we waved goodbye to Lamu from the overcrowded and perilous ferry boat back to the mainland. Overloaded with children, adults and the aged I wondered when the water would start pouring over the low sitting sides. Fortunately there was no wind in the air and the water was dead calm reflecting the early mornings sun.

Once again we endured the crazy bouncing bus ride back south stopping this time in Malindi for the night. Around thirty kilometres from this Italian ex-pat colony is a massive land depression, called Hell’s Kitchen, in a place called Marafa. Reached by yet another treacherous road we hired a taxi for the afternoon and wound our way through rural Kenya in the searing afternoon sun. Formed by erosion from rain on sandstone Hell’s Kitchen is described as a place not to miss. It would be like going to Arizona and not seeing the Grand Canyon. The view from the top was breath taking. The huge red, yellow and white sandstone cliffs were incredible. There was a trail that led through the canyon and into the bottom. The bed of the gorge was soft sand/silt where the rain continues to erode the sandstone but was easily walkable due to the heat evapourating the water from the days gone by.

You can come here every few years and the canyon will never look the same as the erosion is so great. Truly remarkable. In the evening we caught the sunset from the Malindi beach pier and had dinner by the beach.

Later we headed to a local bar for some drinks. The bar itself was fairly interesting as the decor was that of a tacky 1980's disco lounge and the music, to begin, was well suited to the decoration. There were two slightly unnerving issues I had with the bar to begin. Firstly there was not a single girl in the place except for Sara and Ali who were with us, secondly, just after we had entered the bar they had closed the doors behind us and padlocked them. At this point I didn't know the main entrance was hidden around the otherside of the bar. I asked Christoff, one of the chaps who'd been with us all week, about the female situation and he said it was normal. In Africa you don't generally find many women in bars very early. The ones that arrive later are generally all prostitutes as well. Hmmm!

All turned out well in the bar though and we had a great last night together. In the morning we all parted ways and I was once again on my own and heading to Watamu. A beautiful little fishing village on the East Coast between Malindi and Kilifi it is the place of dreams. Long white sweeping beaches, that give any of the stunning beaches of Brazil a run for their money, it is a perfect place to spend a few days relaxing (as I haven't done much of that!) and soaking up some sun. With Kilimanjaro lurking around the corner I was still concious of my need to maintain fitness. I'd been running as much as I could. The scorching hot sun makes it very difficult to do anything, let alone exercise, so I had been running at the crack of dawn almost every other day on the beaches. I maintained this in Watamu even though I became super lazy and spent the rest of the day basking in the sun and eating food when it was either too hot or when the sun had gone down. Before I knew it another four nights had passed. Tropical paradises really do make time fly by and it was time to head back south to Mombasa.

I had but a few nights left in Kenya. From the Masai Mara's rolling green pastures to the peak of Mount Kenya. The stunning beaches that run right along the entire coast of this Indian Ocean adorned country I have been totally enthralled with Kenya. I will be sad to leave but onwards and upwards as they say, and quite literally in my case, as I head to Moshi in Tanzania where I will begin my Kilimanjaro trek on Wednesday. Wish me luck!