Tuesday 12 February 2013

Visiting Kilifi...

Last Sunday we took a road up the North Coast of Mombasa to Kilifi, I've wanted to go there for a while and our original plan was to head to Malindi which is even further up the coast, but we were hungover and didn't wake up early enough, so we settled for Kilifi which was fine by me...

We visited the ruins of a mosque...

We visited a 600 year old Baobab tree (I LOVE Boabab trees, they're HUGE!)


Then we visited a snake park and held a snake... not so much fun for me because when the man took it off my shoulders it tried to bite him, so if he had waited a second longer I would have punched a snake...



After we held the snake, the tour leader asked if we wanted to see them feed the snakes, I said yes as I thought the food would be dead... I MUST HAVE FORGOTTEN I WAS IN KENYA. The next thing I know, he's carrying this cute yellow baby chick over to the snake tank and it's chirping away happily and I suddenly feel SICK and walk away covering my ears. I do not have a single regret that I didn't stay to watch that chick getting eaten... VULTURES.

Next we headed to Kilifi boatyard for a seafood lunch:


After our fill of seafood, we hit the beach to sink into the sand for a lazy hour of sunbathing, swimming and idle chit-chat.

With wet shorts we climbed back into the car and decided to swing by a 5 star golf resort called Vipingo Ridge. This place is so posh it has its own airstrip that you can fly from Nairobi to in your own private jet, so it was really the perfect choice for us in our wet shorts and beach dresses with sandy flip flops... :)

We sat and had coffee, cocktails and a chocolate brownie for the princely sum of £25 while watching the sun set over the valley.




How was your Sunday?

Lamu island is out of bounds then...

Soooooo... The Boy has arrived in Mombasa and has been here for almost one week already! Wow!

It's weird getting used to making plans with someone else when you've been a lone ranger for a month! The other day I went to bed without telling him and he found me in bed and was like 'you didn't tell me you were going to bed' oh yes, I'm not used to telling people my whereabouts, sorry...

We've been busy looking through the Kenya guidebook for all kinds of adventures to fill our time here, and Lamu looked like a decent place to visit. It seemed similar to Stone Town in Zanzibar and I was looking forward to wandering down alleys and checking out some wickedmean architecture, but alas! It is not to be!

It turns out that my Rough Guide I found is from 2009, and since its publication, Somalians keep insisting on kidnapping Westerners so it's no longer safe. Tut.

I'm one of those people who things happen to, so I would 100% be kidnapped if I were to go to Lamu, and that would be REALLY ANNOYING. The FCO website states:

"There were two attacks by armed gangs in small boats against beach resorts on 11 September (Kiwayu) and 1 October 2011 (Manda Island, Lamu). Both attacks were on beach-front properties, with two Westerners kidnapped and one murdered. Security in these areas has been tightened. However, beach-front accommodation and boats off the coast in areas close to the Somali border remain vulnerable."

Hmmmm. Normally I laugh in the face of the FCO website for all its scaremonger tactics and 'Oh, don't go outside when you're in Kenya because it's not safe and you'll be murdered' messaging, but on this occasion I might just go back to Zanzibar again and not be kidnapped.  

To Zanzibar then!

In conclusion: Lamu is full of people waiting to kidnap you, don't go there. I am of course kidding and I do feel bad for it having Somalia as such a shitty neighbour. I liken it to if you had a really nice house with nice furniture and a nice garden and then some chavs moved in to the council house next door and kept killing people. So annoying, you know?