Kenya: Part IX (Mombasa)
Apr. 15th, 2011 11:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
riontelI am going to mostly skip over the weekend, which involved lots of interactions with various relatives, some shopping and an unwelcome reintroduction to bucket bath. Well, I'll only tell you about the bucket bath. I have not had the displeasure of experiencing one since we left Ukraine but water is heated by electricity and we arrived home to discover that the lights were out. Since the compound N.'s stepmom lives in doesn't have a backup generator, servants had to heat up buckets of water for us to refresh ourselves. Funniest thing was that everybody expected me to be both horrified and not knowing how to deal with the situation. They should try visiting Odessa. We didn't use to have water for months on end. Electricity wasn't that reliable either. And no backup generators or boilers, which left one with ... bucket baths, but only when cold water was available. Which wasn't always. Anyhow, you get the idea. Back to our third world country. We took a bucket bath, called water company to come refill the tank, since the pump also requires electricity and went on with our weekend.
On Monday we flew out to the coast, Mombasa. This is actually not the plane we took. N. thought it was our plane because he just didn't want to believe that he would have to trust his life to the tiny little Twin Otter sitting nearby.
The flight was short, a little over an hour, and you can actually watch pilots fly the thing, there is no door on the cockpit. Small lunch provided by Air Kenya was one of the best meals I've ever had on any plane. It had freshly baked chocolate cake in it!
We spent most of the flight trying to spot Mount Kilimanjaro and did finally manage it, despite the haze, the clouds and the fact that we were flying at the hight of the peak and the wing kept blocking our view. Here is the best we managed to capture.
And then we were in Mombasa.
After a short moderately successful battle for better accommodations (it turned out that "ocean-facing" in hotel speak does not mean ocean view, it just means that somewhere a mile away in the same direction your window is facing there is an ocean. We were not amused.) we were on the beach. Notice the white foam towards the horizon, that's waves breaking over the barrier reef.
Later that day I proudly reported home, "Mom, I washed my shoes in the Indian Ocean!" And I did. There are lots of creatures living on the ocean floor, most of them poisonous in some way, so it's wise to wear water shoes when going swimming. The water itself was wonderful. It was like swimming in a warm bath, big warm bath with huge waves, which N. hated. I float, for me swimming in choppy waters is like being on a swing and fun, he sinks like a rock so he has to fight to stay on top of every wave. You also have to look out for the undertow, if you are not strong enough to swim against the drag you might find yourself on the wrong side of the barrier reef making friends with some sharks.
I jumped in the water the moment we got to the beach, swam to my heart's content and then lay down to sunbathe. I take my sunbathing very seriously, under that towel I am covered in SPF 100+ from head to toe.
We happened to be in Mombasa during full moon which later that evening, after we were done with the beach and the pool, N. spent half of our dinner trying to capture.
Evening entertainment at the hotel included a chameleon and some snakes, one of them even poisonous. It was mis-advertised as a snake show. They would bring out a snake and let all willing handle it. Boring. That was the only time we saw any snakes though, despite N.'s stories about myriads of snakes that attack one all over Kenya.
Next morning while I was dead asleep N. got up to bring you these lovely pictures of a sunrise.
There are no lovely pictures of sunsets over the Indian ocean because inconveniently enough it sets in the West.
The rest of the day we spent vegging out by the ocean or in the pool. On our way back to the room after the beach session we caught a troop of vervet monkeys playing around in front of our building. There was a male, some females and a bunch of infants, that were so fast they mostly came out blurry in the pictures.
We had dinner that evening at one of the local must see spots: Ali Baba's Restaurant set in a natural cave. Very nice atmosphere, great food and very good service.
Some nights you can actually see the moon in the opening in cave's roof.
We rounded up the evening back at the hotel with a cup of coffee for N. and two bites by very mean mosquitoes for me.
On Monday we flew out to the coast, Mombasa. This is actually not the plane we took. N. thought it was our plane because he just didn't want to believe that he would have to trust his life to the tiny little Twin Otter sitting nearby.
The flight was short, a little over an hour, and you can actually watch pilots fly the thing, there is no door on the cockpit. Small lunch provided by Air Kenya was one of the best meals I've ever had on any plane. It had freshly baked chocolate cake in it!
We spent most of the flight trying to spot Mount Kilimanjaro and did finally manage it, despite the haze, the clouds and the fact that we were flying at the hight of the peak and the wing kept blocking our view. Here is the best we managed to capture.
And then we were in Mombasa.
After a short moderately successful battle for better accommodations (it turned out that "ocean-facing" in hotel speak does not mean ocean view, it just means that somewhere a mile away in the same direction your window is facing there is an ocean. We were not amused.) we were on the beach. Notice the white foam towards the horizon, that's waves breaking over the barrier reef.
Later that day I proudly reported home, "Mom, I washed my shoes in the Indian Ocean!" And I did. There are lots of creatures living on the ocean floor, most of them poisonous in some way, so it's wise to wear water shoes when going swimming. The water itself was wonderful. It was like swimming in a warm bath, big warm bath with huge waves, which N. hated. I float, for me swimming in choppy waters is like being on a swing and fun, he sinks like a rock so he has to fight to stay on top of every wave. You also have to look out for the undertow, if you are not strong enough to swim against the drag you might find yourself on the wrong side of the barrier reef making friends with some sharks.
I jumped in the water the moment we got to the beach, swam to my heart's content and then lay down to sunbathe. I take my sunbathing very seriously, under that towel I am covered in SPF 100+ from head to toe.
We happened to be in Mombasa during full moon which later that evening, after we were done with the beach and the pool, N. spent half of our dinner trying to capture.
Evening entertainment at the hotel included a chameleon and some snakes, one of them even poisonous. It was mis-advertised as a snake show. They would bring out a snake and let all willing handle it. Boring. That was the only time we saw any snakes though, despite N.'s stories about myriads of snakes that attack one all over Kenya.
Next morning while I was dead asleep N. got up to bring you these lovely pictures of a sunrise.
There are no lovely pictures of sunsets over the Indian ocean because inconveniently enough it sets in the West.
The rest of the day we spent vegging out by the ocean or in the pool. On our way back to the room after the beach session we caught a troop of vervet monkeys playing around in front of our building. There was a male, some females and a bunch of infants, that were so fast they mostly came out blurry in the pictures.
We had dinner that evening at one of the local must see spots: Ali Baba's Restaurant set in a natural cave. Very nice atmosphere, great food and very good service.
Some nights you can actually see the moon in the opening in cave's roof.
We rounded up the evening back at the hotel with a cup of coffee for N. and two bites by very mean mosquitoes for me.
