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The post-Lamu blues

Saturday, July 24th, 2010

“You’ve got the post-Lamu blues,” Wendy told me as we arrived, grumpily, in Malindi. And it was true. After a five-hour bus ride (which we discovered was much bumpier for the first three hours on an unpaved road when you’re sitting near the back of the bus), and then having to endure the touts upon arrival, we were naturally asking ourselves why in the world we had left our beautiful quasi-secret island town for this. But such is life when you’re an ambitious traveller and you have an $800 booking to see mountain gorillas 1800km away in less than two weeks – you always need to move on, sometimes earlier than you’d hoped.

We had only two more places we wanted to see on the Kenyan coast – the Marafa Depression and the Swahili ruins at Gede. To visit both places, we needed to stay at the beach resorts of Malindi and Watamu, the type of towns we would normally avoid like the plague. Watamu was at least somewhat pleasant (touts aside); we didn’t at all see the attraction of Malindi.

Marafa Depression

Meanwhile, Marafa was not as great as we had hoped. It was OK, but we’ve seen similar but immensely more impressive landscapes in places like Cappadocia and northwest Argentina, and, in Wendy’s case, the Grand Canyon. Given that it took us all day to get there and back from Malindi, including waiting for transport etc, it wasn’t worth the effort. In fact, the highlight of the day was being mistaken for Italians by all the local kids in the village near the Depression, as Malindi is extremely popular with Italians; having a five-year-old African kid in a one-street village in the middle of nowhere come up to you and say, “Ciao! Tutto bene?” is pretty surreal.

Gede Ruins

Our next stop was Gede, the most celebrated of the ruins on the Swahili coast. It was very atmospherically situated in a jungle landscape, with monkeys clambering on the ruins and in the nearby trees, but it again revealed a bit of jadedness on our part and the continuation of the post-Lamu blues, as it was certainly no Angkor or Tikal. The structures themselves were not particularly impressive and if it were not for the location, it would have been a disappointment.

To cure the post-Lamu blues, we knew we needed to get ourselves to the one place that could match up to Lamu: Zanzibar. After visiting Gede on Thursday morning, we travelled back to Mombasa in a matatu (a ubiquitous Kenyan minibus) and then hopped on a bus over the border to Tanga in Tanzania, which took 7.5 hours (LP had said 2). We arrived wearily in Tanga at 11:30pm and by 8:45am the next morning we were sitting on another bus bound for the Tanzanian capital Dar es Salaam. We arrived at 3:30pm at the bus station 8km from the town centre, and with 30 minutes left until the last ferry of the day, we went into Amazing Race mode. With the help of a taxi driver who fully invested himself in our ‘race’ – honking and screaming at other drivers who slowed us down, and getting rid of all the fake-ticket touts who descended on the taxi as we parked at the ticket office – we just made it. Two-and-a-half hours later, we arrived in Zanzibar after sundown on Friday, and the post-Lamu blues were over.

Going behind the bui-bui in Lamu

Saturday, July 24th, 2010

According to Lonely Planet, Lamu makes Zanzibar ‘blush with envy,’ which is pretty high praise. And while I will reserve judgement on Zanzibar until we see it for ourselves in the next few days, I am happy to report that Lamu is indeed fabulous, surely one of the great highlights of Africa.

MarketPicture a small, old town on an island off the East African coast with dhows in its bay, donkeys wandering lanes narrower than a human wingspan and absolutely no cars. Imagine veiled Muslim women buying and selling fruit and vegetables in the markets, old men playing traditional board games in front of thatched-roof houses with walls built of coral, and kids excitedly greeting you every time you walk past them. Throw in sunset dhow trips, a Swahili cooking course, delicious seafood and heavenly fresh fruit juice, and that’s Lamu. It’s a rare combination of a very relaxing place and also a culturally important one. Despite all this, it hasn’t (yet) suffered from overdevelopment or over-tourism and there’s less hassle than further down the coast at places like Malindi, making Lamu even more precious.

We spent most of our time wandering the old town’s alleys and generally enjoying the unhurried pace after two long bus rides in three days to get there from Nairobi. Aside from this, highlights were:

Mango Man– A sunset dhow cruise between the islands of Lamu and Manda, and through mangrove forests, finishing with grilled fish on a beach under a blanket of stars;
– Going ‘behind the bui-bui’ (the Swahili word for the abbaya, the black loose-fitting robe worn by many Muslim women over the top of their clothes) and taking a cooking class with a local woman in her home;
– Walking the ramparts of Lamu fort and using our vantage point to look down on the markets and all the other activity below.

On a continent that’s short on places so pleasant and agreeable, it was a wonderful break from the real Africa, and even from the rest of the Swahili coast with its noisy rickshaws/tuk-tuks and endless lines of tourist shops. Some may find its dirtiness (there are open sewers running along most of the lanes) and lack of modern amenities off-putting, but for us this just added to the atmosphere and the charm.

We intended to stay three nights and ended up staying five, and as soon as we left we wanted to go back – that’s what Lamu does to you. Instead, we got on a bus, held our breath, and plunged back into Africa.

Some thoughts on Mombasa

Saturday, July 17th, 2010

Fort JesusMombasa, the second-largest city in Kenya and East Africa’s largest port, is the kind of place I would have really loved five or six years ago – the streets are constantly bustling ... [Continue reading this entry]

Camping, Hiking and Eating Avocados in the Rift Valley

Tuesday, July 13th, 2010

For our last few days in central Kenya, we headed to Lake Naivasha to test out our new camping gear and experience African wildlife from a different perspective in nearby Hell’s Gate National Park, where you can walk or ... [Continue reading this entry]

Lake Nakuru NP: White Rhinos and Pink Flamingos

Thursday, July 8th, 2010

It turned out, whether we were ready for it or not, that barely 36 hours after we'd returned from the Masai Mara, we were being picked up at 6:30am from our hotel in Nakuru for a half-day safari into ... [Continue reading this entry]

Masai Mara: Big Cats and plenty more

Thursday, July 8th, 2010

Our first act in East Africa after acclimatising in Nairobi was to set off to Masai Mara National Reserve for our main safari of this East Africa trip. We chose Masai Mara ahead of some other parks, like Serengeti ... [Continue reading this entry]

Nairobi: Not too bad after all

Friday, July 2nd, 2010

After all the horror stories we’ve heard over the years about Nairobi – ‘Nai-robbery’ – and its cockroach-infested hotels (even at 4-star level), we weren’t exactly excited about our arrival on Thursday. In fact, when we first started planning ... [Continue reading this entry]