2/2-3/14: LONG DAYS DRIVE TO LAMU, KENYA

2/2-3/14: LONG DAYS DRIVE TO LAMU

View of Mt. Meru 

View of Kilimanjaro

View of Kilimanjaro 2

The road to the border crossing was smooth, but, then again, it's the main road from Arusha to Dar es Salam, whereas the road in Kenya is sort of a spur road and wasn't paved. It wasn't possible to do much of anything except bounce around. The last part in Tanzania rounded Mt. Meru and Mt. Kilimanjaro on the southern flanks. We took a ton of pictures of the latter with the early morning sun aglow on it., but only two are worth posting (above).

Motorcycles everywhere

"Welcome to Winners Chapel"

 

Crossing the border was easy but they had everyone pull out their bags for customs and show their vaccination cards for yellow fever. We only had to do the latter, but both were a first and we didn't have to do either at the Kenyan crossing with Uganda. The bathroom was clean on the Kenyan side so it was worth waiting for. ;-) We also were very happy that our single entry visa was honored. We were told this as Kenya is considered a transit country in the region, but we've been told a lot of things that didn't come to pass. The bus drivers changed at the border and a Muslim man in a very nice kufti started to drive. Yehudah exchanged greetings with him and had a short interaction. On board, there was a mix of languages and interactions mostly in Swahili, but one person had a recording going of someone reading in Arabic from the Koran. 

 

Elephants siting, Tsavo West, along the highway, reminding us we are still in Africa. 

The road cut through the center of Tsavo West National Park. Yehudah had just commented on how he was so used to seeing wild animals out the window and all we were seeing was white goats when we saw quite a few elephants, but nothing else. We got to pavement just before the Nairobi-Mombasa highway - yay! We stopped briefly in Vio and bought a coke out the window though we rejected the first one as it was warm. The guy ran back to get a cold one. We had also bought an avocado for about 60 cents and that with the brown bread Yehudah bought on the street while almost getting lost in the dark would be our lunch on the run. (The promised boxed breakfasts our hotel promised us had not appeared before we left.)

Now on the road southeast, we were cutting through Tsavo East on our left and West on the right and vigilant for wildlife. The only thing we saw were a pair of camels! How did they get there!?! All this time writing this, a man has been standing in the aisle displaying and lecturing on the virtues of the herbs and concoctions he's selling. It appears that he has no buyers. 

 

                            Mosque along the road. 

The first signs of nearing the ocean were an abundance of coconut palms. Suddenly we entered a major metropolis and we knew we were in Mombasa, a place attached to some exotic old memories. There were acres of ship containers piled high including one labeled Costco. We got a glimpse of the harbor before landing at the bus station. There one of our fellow travelers, a native Kenyan now living in Sweden, helped us get oriented and told us we could trust the young man who offered to help us move on to Lamu.

He helped us thread the way to the area where offices for buses going north are located. We stopped to sample a fresh coconut which we shared 3 ways, scooping out the inside meat with a tool the seller fashioned out of a piece of the nut. We soon found out that we would have to spend the night as the law prohibiting buses to travel at night applied here as well. Our guide, Antonio, tried to get us on the earliest bus, but it was full. We soon found ourselves in the Simba office. So, we would ride with the same company all the way to Lamu. 

Our next item was to find a place for the night close by so we could walk to the bus station and be there by 6 AM. We got an acceptable room for $10! and left our bags there. (Next morning we discovered that there was no water to take a shower. Joanie couldn't wash her hair, which always keeps her cooler during the day, but we were glad to have taken showers the night before.) We treated Antonio to dinner at a place that advertised Biryani, but they were out of it. So we both got huge plates of rice pilau with veggies, very tasty with Indian spices. We were already feeling the heat so our appetites were low, so we saved quite a bit for breakfast in the little bowls we have been traveling with this entire time. We searched for a cyber cafe, but, being Sunday, most were closed. Finally we found one on the other side of the huge Noor Mosque. Though it didn't have wifi, we were satisfied to just check our email for half an hour. Antonio asked for some pocket money, which he had certainly earned, but we were running low on Kenyan shillings and Yehudah didn't want to use an ATM until we got to Lamu. We spent the evening lying naked in our rooms with the ceiling fan going while Joanie worked on the blog and Yehudah read about the area we were about to explore. There was still a lot of traffic noise outside and our neighbors had their tv and voices on high volume, so Yehudah put in his ear plugs and quickly fell asleep. 

Our Simba Bus - we got to it still in the dark!

We woke up before the alarm to an already warm room and decided to head downstairs where it was cooler. We camped out in front of the bus office and watched the predawn scene unfold. A mute young man who worked for the bus company did a great job of pantomiming the lion ("Simba" in Swahili) symbol of the company. We showed him our photographs of the lions lounging on the rocks. We watched men pushing or pulling carts with car tires for wheels up the slight incline of the street.

The bus wouldn't start so they needed to jump start it. When the engine caught, a boy just getting on the bus fell backwards out of the bus. Fortunately, he didn't appear hurt. Simultaneously, someone stepped on Joanie's toe and caused some bleeding, which we were able to rinse and bandage. Oy, what a start!

Yo picked a newspaper up and read that there had been a riot at a mosque the afternoon we arrived and an officer and a rioter had been shot and killed. Leaflets had drawn a huge number of youths to the mosque and jihad had been preached to them for 5 hours before they broke into the streets where the police were waiting. It wasn't the same mosque we were near, but I wondered if anyone back home had heard about this event knowing we were in Mombasa that day. 

As the day brightened we were reminded that we were next to the Indian Ocean by the low clouds above us. Soon the sun would burn through and it would heat up again. As we drove through the streets, now crowded with traffic, we passed a sign directing those interested to a nearby synagogue! Perhaps Chabad. The sign had a menorah and Hebrew writing on it. 

Synagogue sign in Mombasa

We picked up more passengers across from the market which was just beginning to get lively. There a Muslim man directed his workers in loading many sacks of produce into the storage areas under the bus. We were noticing Muslim men with beards and hair dyed red and later saw pictures in barber shops advertising henna for such purposes. We passed some fancy oceanfront hotels before getting on the open road. These were followed by simple mud and stick houses with thatched roofs where the residents lived and shared the same oceanfront views. We passed a huge sisal farm that was spotted with the thick trunked, often leafless, short branched baobab trees. The plant used for sisal is different than one in Tanzania. I remember yellow, thin sisal rope when I was a kid. Guess it got replaced by plastic rope in the USA. 

We hadn't seen this many humps in the road to slow down traffic since western Uganda, but here they are again, though here there's a bit of forewarning as they often put a palm stump on the shoulders of the road. 

We reached the bustling city of Malindi which has turned into a destination resort for mostly Italian tourists. Saw lots of muzungus (foreigners) strolling about, shopping in the specialty shops, wearing shorts and sleeveless tops. We are considering stopping here overnight on the way back to check out the Hindu and Jain temples and the Gede Ruins. We will see how it works out. 

 

 

 

 

                                          Salt ponds

Then a long stretch of the highway, which was now in much worse shape, revealed a number of salt companies with acres of drying ponds and hills of salt. We passed a huge baobab tree encircled by a family's home and outbuildings. We passed too quick to grab a picture, but it made quite an impression. At another point, the driver stopped to chat with the Simba bus driver heading south. 

 

 

 

Witu is a village along the road that is the center of one of the regional tribes with very distinctive building styles and women's dress. 

 

The bus trip ended finally and we escaped the hustle and hassle of the "beach boys" and threaded our way to the speed boats. Lamu, ahoy!

 

 

 

 

                          First views of Lamu 

 

 

 

 

                       View from the rooftop

We arrived in Lamu via speedboat with the woman and her son in front of us, plus the guy behind. Yehudah's phone didn't work here and the person whose phone we tried to borrow received a call, so one man who said he was a tour guide said he knew Malik and guided us to the house for a small fee. We arrived at our spacious, palatial dwellings, greeted by our eccentric, wonderful host, ready to spend several days in this small paradise.

 

                   Sunset from the rooftop!

           Beautiful dreamer going tropical!