A Whole Other Country

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On Monday I caught the Scandinavian bus up to Mombassa, to meet up with a friend from university. It’s not far geographically, but Kenya and Tanzania are quite different. Kenya is more developed, has more traffic, more hustle and bustle, and more rules and regulations. Although the people are just as friendly.

I stayed with my friend Kizito and his friend Millie in a suburb called Mikandani, and on my first night I was only good for sleeping! On the Tuesday we went to a place called Fort Jesus, it’s a big place with lots of history, having been used for defence and as a prison in the past. It’s a cool place to wander round with allsorts of little nooks and crannies to discover, and beautiful views over the sea. Afterwards we went for lunch and wandered round town for a while. When we returned to Mikandani we bought a couple of beers and sat on the roof top of the apartment block watching the sun go down on the world!

On Wednesday we got the bus up to Malindi marine reserve which is a couple of hours north of Mombassa. From the bus we took a little put put to the park which kept on breaking down! More than once Kizito had to get out and push! It was worth it though, the park was beautiful, and we lay on the beach for the rest of the day. It’s possible to go out on a glass bottom boat and see the fish close up, but it was too expensive for my budget, and we were quite content on the beach.

On Thursday we went up to the crocodile park, which was kinda cool. The crocodiles were very majestic, and they have an albino crocodile too. But some of the cages that the fish, spiders and snakes were in were disgustingly small and dirty, and quite upsetting. This didn’t detract from the crocodiles however which we watched jumping up out of the water as they were being fed. It was also amusing watching Kizito who was quite scared of the crocodiles!

From the crocodile park we went for dinner and then onto a club called Tembo (elephant). This was the coolest nightclub I have seen in Africa! Upstairs there is a bar area and pool tables where you can chill out. The main club entrance is off to the side and as you go in the full enormity of the place hits you. There is a huge ramp that descends into a massive club that could well have once been a quarry or something similar. The whole thing is sunken and the rock walls and surrounding trees are still visible behind the lights and decoration of the club which is essentially open air. The dance floor is also massive, although on this occasion there were few people dancing and we sat at the side and decided against inflicting our dance moves on anyone’s eyes! Tembo was a fitting end to my time in Mombassa, it is a very cool place and it would have been good to have seen more.

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