When I called my dad for father’s day he complained that I hadn’t updated my blog in awhile so I figured I would fix that for him! Well, I just got back early this morning from a five day, four night stay in Diani which is near the coastal city of Mombasa. My first night in Kenya, volunteers at the house asked me if I wanted to come to Mombasa with them for a week and at first I thought they were crazy…turns out they become some of my best friends here and I couldn’t resist a trip to the Indian Ocean. I will backtrack a bit to the beginning…getting the bus tickets.
Diani is about a 9-10 hour bus ride from Nairobi and there are about a million different bus companies to choose from but my friend Liz and I who were traveling together decided to go with Simba Coach. To give you an example of how cheap it is here, round-trip the bus ticket cost me about 25 US dollars…not bad eh? Getting to the bus station downtown was quite the trip. We had been warned that River Road, where the company was located, was not the safest of areas and to be sure to watch our bags. Now, if any of you have been to Chinatown, you might understand a little bit of the chaotic feeling we had walking through the downtown area. Getting off the city busy, crossing a few streets and bam! We were in a whole other world. Liz and I had been told it was rather easy to find Simba…WRONG. We were walking around like two lost puppies until we stumbled across a bakery, which didn’t exactly give us good directions, but we did end up buying some cookies that kept us pretty satisfied. Eventually, we found the ticket office, booked the trip and got the heck out of there. Come Wednesday night, Liz and I boarded the bus and, shockingly, it left at exactly 9:30 pm…nothing every leaves on time in Kenya so we were extremely surprised. We couldn’t help but laugh because this bus was straight out of the seventies; I was literally waiting for a disco ball to pop down any moment. After sleeping on and off for ten hours, we finally arrived in Diani at Southcoast Backpackers hostel. Our goal for the trip was basically to do absolutely nothing and that we did. We got some breakfast, changed into swimsuits and headed down to the flawless white sand beaches of the Kenyan coast. Pure bliss if you ask me…minus the “beachboys” pestering us here and there.
The next day, Liz and I woke up and started an hour and a half journey to Mombasa to meet our tour guide Alfred who would be taking us around the city. Lucky us, we had to matatu from Diani to Likoni then we had to take the ferry from Likoni to Mombasa. This ferry holds 1500 people and let me tell you, I am 99.9% positive we were the only two white people on the entire thing, we figured this since anytime either of us looked up, we felt 1498 eyes staring down and at us…talk about feelin the heat. All in all though, our day with Alfred was absolutely wonderful. We walked along the coast, saw Portuguese graves that had been turned into a park, looked at the coral Mombasa was formed on, walked through Old Town where we saw the first post office in Kenya, the “White House” aka the “Obama House”, Fort Jesus (which we didn’t pay to go in but got in anyways because we had to pee…sneaky!), the tusks given to the city as a gift from Queen Elizabeth, many mosques (the city is 60% Muslim and there is a mosque every 50 kilometers) and got a personal tour of a delicious spice shop. We ended the day with a walk on the north coast of Mombasa…yet another exquisite beach. Not to mention I discovered Swahili coffee that day and had mouthwatering pilau (a Kenyan rice dish) where Alfred made me eat the chicken off the bone like a Kenyan.
That was the extent of our activity in Diani because for the next three days, all we did is lay on the beach shooing away men and women who wanted to sell us things…I even got a marriage proposal, my first one here! He went up to Liz and asked her how many cows it would take to marry me…I cut in and said 100 and he asked me for a discount. Please, the minute I’m on sale for a man is the minute he can walk the other way…I politely told him that and so then he asked if I wanted camels instead…there is no escaping these beach boys. It is pretty funny to converse with them and eventually, Liz had to pretend she was sleeping because she was too friendly so I had to take the reigns and make them go away…it’s an interesting game. Oh yes, I also used an entire bottle of sunscreen and still got burned…I prefer to say kissed by the sun :). We also rode camels on our last day, sitting on a camel while they stand up is quite the trip and I have the pictures to prove it…my face says everything! When we weren’t sitting in the sand we were busy living off of nutella and banana crepes and fruit smoothies…rough life I know! While in Diani I also rode my first motorbike ever…go figure the first time I ride one is in Kenya…woops! Sidenote, except for the train, I have taken every form of transportation here in Kenya: boda boda (motorbike), matatu, city bus, coach bus, ferry, taxi, and tuk tuk…whew! There isn’t much more to report back about the beach other than it was breathtaking :).
Ooh! One last funny story, so Liz and I called for a tuk tuk to show up at 615 to take us to the bus station…he didn’t show up until 645 and it wasn’t a tuk tuk, it was a boda boda…picture this: one motorbike, the driver with a backpack on the front, Liz in the middle with a purse on each side, and me, holding on for dear life on the back with my backpack as he decided to not slow down for speed bumps and go nice and fast since we were “late”. Yes sir, we’re “late” because of you…anyways, it was an adventure to say the least. Getting back to the volunteer house after getting into the city at 530 am was also an experience in itself but Liz and I survived and laughed the entire way because sometimes…there is nothing else you can do but laugh at how things turn out. Summing it up…I am not currently engaged to any beachboy looking for an American wife, Liz got burned on the exhaust pipe of a boda boda but is healing well, I am now pink instead of white, and I still have a layer of sand over my entire body. Oh…and for anyone who has said I’m looking “more tan” I can confirm it is A. because of any filter from my phone camera and B. layers and layers of dirt…I’m really not exaggerating…I’ve accepted I won’t be clean until I’m home, I’m really embracing the Kenyan experience J. As always, sending my love to the states!
“We wander for distraction but we travel for fulfillment” – Hilaire Belloc
