Lamuving on from Nairobi

---

I was starting to feel like I was spending entirely too much time in Nairobi, even though I had been coming and going. So I decided to head for the coast. I had heard good things about Lamu, an island to the North, and since Maria and Soren (a German couple from Wildebeest Camp) were heading there, I decided to pass through Mombasa and go straight there.

We all had first class tickets for the train, which included dinner and breakfast. It's a fifteen hour ride that goes through the night, and you arrive in Mombasa around 9:30AM. Each cabin had relatively comfortable bunk beds, a sink, closet, and fan that didn't work because the train was made in the '60's.

The train was set to leave the station at 7PM. I was sprawled out on the bottom bunk as they were shouting for last call for boarding at 6:30, feeling pretty good about my situation of not having to deal with a stranger's nocturnal habits all through the night. That lasted only until Ben, a six foot tall, sweaty mess of a man with his Tommy Bahama's shirt unbuttoned to his belly staggered into the doorway with a Tusker lager clenched in each of his fists.

Fuck.

I could barely make out in between his gasps that he had to run from Ngong road because of the daily traffic jam that he didn't allow time for. And so began a long talk with one of the most awkward conversationalists I have ever encountered. He was one of those people that you would be talking to about a subject, and he would interrupt you to go off on a tangent completely unrelated. Eventually, I just pretended to be asleep until the dinner bell rang.

I couldn't have been more relieved to see that Maria and Soren were in the same dining car as us, so I could have somebody normal to talk to for at least a couple hours. It didn't take long before they were giving me "What's with this guy?" looks. I had no explanation.

In the morning you could feel the humidity rising with the sun as we neared the Indian coast. It was a stark change from the relatively chilly mornings in Nairobi. The train is the best way to travel to Mombasa because of the scenery in the morning. It's not nearly as fast as traveling by bus, but it comes through Tsavo East and West national parks, where you can see all different kinds of wildlife from the window, including elephants and giraffes. I wasn't so lucky, but it was still nice.

Maria, Soren, and I hopped in a cab at the train station to get to the bus that was leaving in two hours for Lamu. On the way we were stopped by a police officer, who proceeded to look around the outside of the car for no apparent reason, and asked the driver to get out. After he felt like he had wasted a sufficient amount of our time, he went to the back door where Maria was sitting, opened it, and said, "Move over."

She gave him back a very firm "NOO!.. No way." But eventually, since he's the police, he got his way. Lucky for us all he wanted was a free ride, and not a bribe for some made up reason that is all too common in Kenya.

When we got to the bus station, we were surprised to find that a couple more people we knew from Wildebeest, Tanya and Brian, had made their way from Amboseli to catch the very same bus. Small world.

I was sitting in an aisle seat, which I thought was a good thing because I would have room to stretch. However I didn't account for the fact that it's winter in Kenya, and the chance of a Kenyan opening the window in this frigid 30 degree weather for even a small duration of the trip is pretty much zero. So it was a long, sweaty, bumpy ride in the obviously un-airconditioned bus, but at least I had my iPod.

The whole lot of us hopped onto the ferry after getting off the bus, where a few more former Wildebeest camp residents (Joe, Prasanna and Paul) met us on the other side in Lamu. It was like a reunion, which was perfect because as it so happened, it was Maria's birthday.

The party got even larger when we went out for dinner, because Maria and Soren were planning on meeting a couple they met at Wildebeest while I was at Hell's Gate. Unfortunately, Paul couldn't make it to dinner because he was sick. He and Joe decided to partake in eating some African food (cow's intestines) the night before, that didn't quite agree with him.

Like almost every restaurant on the island, seafood was their specialty. That wasn't the best case scenario for me, hating every food that comes from the ocean, but everybody else seemed pretty psyched on their giant crab fresh from the ocean for five dollars.

After dinner we took to the streets to find a bar to get our drink on. It proved to be harder than expected since there's only a few establishments that serve alcohol on the island. The island doesn't, however, have a shortage of donkeys or their excrement. According to a local I met, there's only two or three cars on the island, and virtually no roads. So everybody gets around by boat or by donkey. They were everywhere. I spent most of the walk staring at the ground directly in front of me wondering when I was about to step in donkey crap. I found out in the daylight that on Lamu, you're always about to step in donkey crap. Joe led us to a rooftop bar he had found a day or two earlier that was ran by a rasta looking dude named Satan. Yes, Satan.

We had a few drinks before heading back to our respective hotels. It seemed everybody was staying somewhere different as a result of arriving at different times. Joe and I caught a boat back to our hotel on the other side of the island in Shela. The problem with staying in Shela is that the tide comes in at night, and no tourist is going to know the way there through the centre of the island in the dark where there aren't any roads. So basically, the boat drivers have you by the balls, and you get to pay crazy prices to get back.

Ten days earlier in Mombasa, Joe had been playing Beeropoly (Monopoly with beer) with a few people at the hostel. He managed to slip on some stairs with a bottle in his hand, breaking it and slicing his hand open pretty good. He had to go get stitched up and they told him to take out the stitches in ten days. So first thing in the morning he did so. It didn't look pretty. Slightly infected and completely unhealed, he was forced to head to the hospital on the island to get it looked at. Paul and I followed shortly after to see how he was doing. We found him in a room with a doctor that looked more puzzled than we were. He said it was infected and that he couldn't stitch it back up like that. He gave Joe some antibiotics and some ibuprofen and sent him on his way with a gaping hole in his palm. So we took to the streets to walk around a bit.

Lamu has a different feel than the rest of Kenya. It's one of the original Swahili settlements, and has remained relatively isolated over the years, preserving the traditional culture. It has a very large Muslim population, which is why it's so hard to find a drink. It also has a unique island atmosphere, and a lot of the buildings there are made out of coral bricks. It's an environmental tragedy sure, but it does make for a cool looking town. The island itself is tiny, you could walk it end to end in an hour or two. There isn't much in the way of beaches on the main part of the island, but with a bit of exploring later I discovered where they were (sort of) hidden.

We stopped off at a pharmacy so Joe could get some bandages to wrap up his hand before going to lunch. It was around that time Paul informed us that he was still not feeling great after eating the insides of that cow, and had to return to the hotel. Joe and I wandered into the middle of the island away from the town. It started to get all sandy and open, and we kept walking in the general direction of Shela. Eventually, we stumbled upon a village that looked somewhat deserted. It was made of thatched roof huts and other structures made mostly of sticks. It was the first of a few seemingly random sights on the island.

That night the three of us were sitting on the rooftop patio of our hotel. I was snapping pictures of the sunset and view while the other guys were reading. I noticed a few sandy hills in the middle of the island that looked easily scalable, so since they had been there a few days already I asked them if they thought it'd be a problem if I wanted to climb them. Since a lot of the time in Africa stuff like that has government buildings at the top or some other reason tourists can't climb. Paul said to me, "I'm pretty sure you can do whatever you want here man." Good enough for me, I decided I was going to head up there the next night after they moved on to Mombasa.

In the morning when the guys packed up and went back to Mombasa, I decided to move to Lamu town because I was sick of getting ripped off by the damn boat drivers every night. I went and stayed in the place Prasanna was at, but unfortunately he had to jet too because he found a deal on a flight to Zanzibar he couldn't say no to. I ran into Maria, Soren and Tanya at lunch. They were doing the opposite of me, moving to Shela from Lamu for the last couple days there. So I was sort of on my own, which was fine since I wanted to go run around on the hills I saw and take some pictures.

I left around four to try to find the hills before sunset. I couldn't see them from the seawall though, so I had to make an educated guess at their distance from my hotel, then follow random alleys into the centre of the island. It wasn't long before I found myself at the front of Shela Primary School as the sun was starting to set. (Why did I leave Shela again?) Just behind the field in the back, I finally found the base of the first hill that I saw from the hotel. I ran up it and was pretty surprised that from the top there were sand dunes as far as I could see all down the centre of the island. Lucky for me, it was easy to climb them since it rains so much there the sand was packed pretty well. Each time I would reach the top of one, the next one looked a little higher and was in the way of my view, so I ran to the next one.

Once I reached the top of what I would call the tallest one, I stopped to have a look around. I could see the entire island; Lamu, Shela, the village in the middle - everything. On the back side there was a beach that stretched for as far as I could see. As far as I could tell there was only one person on it. It wasn't mentioned in Lonely Planet, so maybe not that many people know about it. The strangest thing though was that on the dune in front of me, there were two camels grazing. I looked around to see if there was anybody tending to them, but didn't see a soul. I took a minute to wrap my head around the idea of a couple wild camels on a small island before making the obvious decision of running up to them to see what they would do. I got within a few feet of them and they didn't budge, so clearly somebody on the island owned them and they were used to people. I had never seen a camel up close before so I was pretty shocked at their size. I left wishing I had brought a can of Coke with me, they always crush it on TV.

I left Lamu the next morning. As the rain poured down I was still buzzing from the feeling of freedom and discovery I felt ripping around on the hills. Something that simple had become possibly my favourite moment of the trip. I took the bus back to Mombasa, where I could only stay for a couple of days since I had to be in Rwanda in a couple weeks, and I still had to pass through Uganda on the way.

My experience in Mombasa wasn't the best. I stayed in the city because I didn't have the time to go down south to the beach. My impression of the city was that it was an equally dirty, much lamer version of Nairobi. Of course this is probably heavily influenced by the fact that I got robbed. Due to my own stupidity, I got taken for $100 because I kept it in my backpack and got pickpocketed. But what is far more frustrating is that somehow the fucker managed to get my drybag out of my pack without me noticing. It's only worth $15 new, but I really depend on it to keep my camera gear dry in the tropical rains they get in places here. It already saved my camera once on the way to Lamu from Shela on a speed boat when I got splashed multiple times from sitting in the back. It's going to be impossible to replace, and now I'm going to have to rely on plastic bags, which are illegal in Rwanda. Yes, plastic bags are illegal. On the bright side I did meet some cool people in Mombasa Backpackers.

Dejected and frustrated I took the bus back to Nairobi to set up shop at Wildebeest camp for the umpteenth time. I couldn't have been happier at that point to be greeted by a round of hugs and high fives from familiar faces. Joe and Paul had made it there from Mombasa, and even waited up for an extra day for me to go to Carnivore once I told them I was heading that way. Marc was there too, a Spanish guy that had been there the entire time I was while he set up a new store in town. And I was mostly surprised to see Maddie was there too. She was supposed to be at Mount Kenya doing some work, but she got very sick and had to return to Nairobi.

That night Marc was totally bagged and had to stay in while the rest of us went for dinner at Carnivore, one of the most famous restaurants in Africa. It costs about $35 a person for all you can eat meat. They serve all the usual suspects (beef, pork, chicken, turkey, goat) in all forms, but they also have a few things you don't normally see, like crocodile, ox, and ostrich. They used to have things like camel, zebra, and giraffe, but restrictions on game meat have changed that.

Everything is cooked to perfection on a roticary above a charcoal grill. They bring it out on swords and use machettes to cut off chunks onto your plate. Initially they came around offering salad, which was greeted by a round of, "Pass. Pass. Pass. Pass" from us. Then came baked potatoes.

"Pass. Pass. Pass. Pass." It's called carnivore, not omnivore.

Then the meat came out in droves. They were bringing different things faster than I could eat them and it started to pile up. When you can't take it anymore, there's a white flag in the middle of the table that you tip over to show your surrender. I think we made a pretty sizable dent in some of those carcases before doing so.

I'm going to miss the feeling of comradery and having people I consider actual friends that Wildebeest provided when I leave Nairobi. It's sort of like since I left home I've never had to experience anything on my own, and there's always been a bunch of people to come back to whenever I went somewhere else in Kenya. It's too bad that I can't keep traveling around with some of these people, but I have to push on down towards South Africa, I have a schedule to keep.

On the bright side, the next few weeks have some of the things I have been looking forward to the most in Africa. Specifically white water rafting on the Nile and seeing the mountain gorillas in Parc National des Volcans in Rwanda. Should be some good adventures coming up.

---

Photos

Shela
View of Shela from the sand dunes.

"Can you climb those hills?" - me
"You can do whatever you want here." - Paul

Meat
Note: Not recommended to eat them all...

Maddie
Don't mind the guy with the sword and machette.