We were given a long weekend for Easter, and after having a going away party for our UK friends, Cordelie, Kevin, and I left on a bus to spend the weekend in Mombasa. This was a long an interesting journey composed of many confusing parts. We first had to take a dala-dala to Tanga to catch our bus (incidentally, this bus was the Lamborghini of buses here- very nice especially compared to my previous experiences with long-haul buses in Tanzania: no one standing in the aisles, and even an action movie (American Ninja- look it up, it’s amazing)). It took a couple hours to get to the border, where we had to get off the bus and wait in a very long and pushy queue to go through Tanzanian departure customs/immigration. After we exited the building, we looked around for our bus, which was nowhere to be found. After looking very confused, a border official took pity on us and explained that we had to walk across the no man’s land at the border to get on the bus on the Kenyan side. He also gave us the helpful advice to not talk to anyone in this area because there were a lot of touts trying to hassle us. We walked across and went through Kenyan immigration, got our visas, and once again could not find our bus. The bus people had been super nice the entire time and one of them stayed with us to make sure that the wazungu didn’t get lost. They explained that the bus had gone ahead and that we needed to get on another bus to catch up with it. We were very confused because all of our stuff was on the bus, but what could we do, so we got on another bus and rode that to the inspection point where our bus was going through Kenyan customs. Finally back on the correct bus, we spent another few hours driving through the rural areas to Mombasa.
It was interesting to see the differences between Kenya and Tanzania, even just across the border. The road was definitely worse in Kenya, and rural areas seemed poorer. The people speak better English though. There were a lot more people of Indian-descent in this area of the country as well. When we made it closer to Mombasa, the bus stopped again, and a lot of people got off. A nice man explained to us that you have to get off the bus and cross on a ferry to get to the island of Mombasa, and then get back on the bus on the other side. We were again unsure but they were insistent, so we got off, walked onto the ferry which also carried the cars/buses/etc across and rode it the short distance across the channel. Once on the other side, we caught up with our bus again and finally made it to our bus station. We took a tuk-tuk to our hotel, and then to the dinner place (we were warned by the hotel never to walk outside at night).
The next day, we went to Fort Jesus and Old Town Mombasa. We met up with a tour guide who showed us the historic Portugese fort used for protection of the port city in the 1500s. Old Town was also interesting and we got to see how people still live down the winding narrow streets even today. We had lunch at a local Indian-influence restaurant. Then we made the journey to Diani Beach (supposedly the nicest of the tourist beaches on the Mombasa coast). This journey was also long and complex- a tuk-tuk from hotel to ferry, ferry across the channel, matatu (Kenyan dala-dala) to Ukunda which is a small village near the beach, then second matatu to our hotel. Our hotel was at the very end of the beach, so we had to walk the final short distance. We got checked in at our hotel, then went to look at the beach. As our hotel was not directly on the water (and therefore really cheap), we sat at the fancy resort across the street that was on the beach. We had some ice cream and drinks, and then we went in their pool. Until we got kicked out of the pool because we hadn’t paid the pool fee, which was a misunderstanding because we thought we were told by the guard that if we had something to eat we could use it. Oops. We went back to our hotel and then to eat delicious prawn curry for dinner at the restaurant next door.
The following day we walked along the beach in the morning and found a breakfast place which served disappointing expensive tiny crab omelets. We sat at our table for a few hours in the shade and watched the beach/read. We then went to the local hang-out “Forty Thieves” where we sat some more, went in the ocean, and had really good lamb burgers for lunch. We finally made our way back to our hotel and went back to the fancy resort across the street for their Saturday night “Easter BBQ” which was a freshly barbequed buffet of deliciousness, including all kinds of amazing salads, bread, and BBQ chicken, steak, huge prawns, calamari, fish, and sausage. We ate a ridiculous amount, and it was surprisingly cheap even being at the big fancy resort. We didn’t use the pool. If I ever come back to Mombasa I am seriously staying at this place, it was amazing. Although I think we got the best of both worlds by paying for a cheap room across the street and then enjoying their beach front and amazing restaurant. In summary, this day consisted entirely of eating and sitting.
This morning, we went for “Easter Breakfast” at the resort which was way better than our previous breakfast spot and also included a ridiculous amount of food. We then sank into a lethargic stupor when the heat of the day combined with all the food we ate. We wanted to go out on a dhow sailing boat to go snorkeling at the reef, but we weren’t sure how to arrange this. We decided to go leave our bags at our hotel and then walk along the beach and try to find someone to take us out. Amazingly, as we were leaving the resort a guy on a bike stopped and asked us if we were staying at “Tropical Oasis” (we were), and then told us that the manager there had asked him to arrange us a dhow snorkeling trip and he would be ready to go in 15 minutes. This was an amazing coincidence because we had been talking to the manager about it but figured nothing would come of it. So we dropped our bags and double checked that this was someone the manager knew, then we sailed to the reef! The dhows are small wooden boats carved out of one piece of wood, with an outrigger for stability on either side. There is one sail. We sailed out to the reef at low tide and then actually walked along the top of the reef (although not good for coral) and then sort of walk-snorkeled in a shallow cove. We saw a lot of colorful fish, starfish, sea-urchins, and even an octopus. The tide came in fast though, so we hopped back on the boat and headed back to shore. Feeling proud that we managed to drag ourselves out of our stupor and actually do something, we then got cleaned up and went back to Forty Thieves for lunch. I think you are sensing a theme here. We then made the trek back to Mombasa city, where we ate Kenyan BBQ and we will spend the night and then tomorrow morning take the long bus-ride back to our home.
It was a great, relaxing weekend, and it was nice to see a part of a new country that I have always been curious about! I’m definitely looking forward to being back to our Tanzanian home and to all that I will see and do in the hospital next week. Talk to you soon!
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