Holiday Travel

It has been too long since the last update.  Much has occurred during the last few weeks and I will try to give a bit of those happenings here.

Vacation

Deb was able to take time off from work around the Christmas holiday.  As a project supervisor she does not have a very flexible schedule, but near the Christmas holiday the is much vacation time taken my all.  We used the break to travel a bit farther than we had previously. Our destination was the beaches south of Mombasa on the Kenyan coast. We began our journey by traveling by car to Nairobi. By coincidence, a friend of ours was driving to the exact location on the coast as us. (He was traveling with his 3 year old daughter and picking up his father, who was arriving in Nairobi from the U.S., on the way).  We had already booked a short flight from Nairobi to Mombasa to save on time, but were grateful to make a quick 5 hr trip to Nairobi. We stayed in a guesthouse for a night in Nairobi, getting to eat at our new favorite Ethiopian restaurant (in fact the only restaurant we have tried for dinner in our 3 opportunities there). Our flight was early the next morning and soon we walked out of the plane into the Mombasa heat and humidity. We picked up our rental car, a basic sedan (sedans are called “saloon cars” in Kenya) and we were graced to get through the madness of Mombasa traffic unscathed in my first ever foreign driving experience (discounting driving a bus in Canada). After a short trip down a fairly calm and well maintained coastal road, we arrived to the white sands and sea breezes at Twiga Lodge Resort.  

 It seems there are many more fancier/touristy/package resorts a bit farther near a place called Diani Beach. Not that there weren’t tourists at Twiga Lodge (we are tourists of sorts ourselves, albeit tourists who live in country), but it was very laid back and it seemed to draw families and people interested it camping on the beach.  There were also many Kenyans who seemed to go there to spend their Christmas relaxing at the ocean. I had never been to the ocean without it being frigid temps and I can see why people enjoy sitting on the beach under palm trees gazing at a turquoise ocean. It is hard to describe what we did there beyond relax. I guess we swam, applied and reapplied sun screen, talked with some of the local people selling crafts and food on the beach, and even tried snorkeling. We spent hours having lazy and simple meals at the Lodge’s restaurant. We made a few trips to Diani beach- one was to take a boat out to a good spot to snorkel, and the other was to get some delicious Italian food.

Having a rental saloon, we felt a bit of freedom and decided to drive to a very small national park, which was close to Twiga Lodge.  We brought our borrowed tent and continued to camp that night. After paying the equivalent of 3 U.S. dollars each to camp at the beach, the park seemed expensive, but looking back it was worth it. We spent most of the 1^st day there driving our saloon car on fairly accessible dirt roads around the park looking for animals. Early on it seemed the heat of midday made sightings rare, but later we saw giraffes, a few types of antelope, warthogs, and a small group of buffalo up close. Then next morning we went on a hike to a place by a waterfall that is supposedly a good place to see elephants. We missed the elephants this time, but it was a nice walk. No surprise we didn’t see them, as the group was probably nearly 30 and many of them we talking away in various European languages the whole time.

We returned to the inviting beach for one last night before we traveled back to Mombasa. It was this night we got news of a scary health emergency for a close friend in Minneapolis. We spent the evening and night trying to harness the spotty 3G connection to make calls back to find out more information. We were able to hear a few more details though it didn’t help take away the feeling of immense distance between us and our community of friends back there. We tried to think positive thoughts, had a toast to our friend, and waited to hear more sometime in the future.

Mombasa greeted us again with it’s busy winding streets and we drove back in and searched for our hotel. We stayed in a pretty simple place (though it did have a/c) on the 8^th floor which granted us a cool view of the city and particularly the mosque across the street. 

Mombasa has a bit of a different feel to it for a number of reasons (read up here: XXXXX). It was a great city to walk around it and we even has a few clouds that day to temper the sweltering heat even a little bit.  We walked in an area called “Old Town” past many gift shops, open markets, the spice market, the harbor, and also had some good food.  We ate at a local place, trying some food from Swahili culture, which has much more use of spices and flavors than “upcountry” Kenya. We got ice cream cones from a little place on the corner and walked some more.  We stopped later, during the hottest part of the day in a cool coffee/tea house. The places’ décor was seemingly aiming for a mid-east flair and it also served as a kind of a youth community and discussion center.  We had strong, rich, coffee while relaxing on pillows/mats and enjoying the coolness of the old building. Our next adventure was to peruse the gift shops. Deb enjoys the somewhat foreword banter that many of the proprietors of these shops employ. It makes me a little anxious, but together I think we do well. We found a few neat treasures, including a gift for the friend who was in the hospital in MN. Many of the shop keepers were happy to hear that we lived in Kenya and of the work we were doing. One was particularly generous when he learned we were looking for gifts for a friend who was ill. We returned to our hotel to rest and recoup before undertaking a drive in the dark to dinner in another part of the city. The destination was a fancy place which guidebooks described as worth their cost, but when we arrived we were informed there was a special event and tables were booked.  We were able to eat at another place which was somewhat associated with the original place. We sat near the water and enjoyed good service and a very nice meal.

We woke at 3:30 am the next morning to ensure our arrival at the airport for a 5 am flight. Just before leaving our room we were able to hear the call to prayer which blanketed the city, still dark, with a peaceful beauty. Then long travel ensued. We flew from Mombasa back to Nairobi, made a quick exchange of the tent with a friend departing to Zanzibar and hopped in her taxi. The taxi dropped us at a bus station in the capitol where we booked tickets and waited to board. At roughly 9 am we were rolling through central Nairobi on our way back to Eldoret. Luckily the bus was only 1/3 filled and we had room to stretch out and sleep a bit as we were transported though cities and towns and countryside. The drive was slow, at times a bit hot, and of course bumpy, but all in all not bad.  We were dropped off bleary eyed in central Eldoret at around 4:30. We were tired and a bit sunburned, but happy to have made the trip to the coast.