Watamu is a nice little town on the coast of Kenya, just north of Mombasa. It has beautiful white sand beaches and nice warm water. It is currently the off season, though, so there aren't a whole lot of tourists and lots of seaweed is starting to wash up on shore. Unfortunately it is ridiculously hot during the day. Before 8am and and after 5:30pm or so, it is cool enough to lay out on the beach and go for a swim. In between though, shade is essential, unless you want skin cancer, which, apparently lots of Italian and British tourists do.

Great fan of the beach that I am, I decided to spend my first full day in town visiting the nearby ruins of a Swahili town called Gede (or Gedi). The ruins were great. They were from the 1400 or 1500s and were quite run down, considering. Whether this was because the buildings were made of coral rag or because they were in the middle of a tropical forest, I don't know. In any case, there were remains of a large old mosque, a palace, numerous houses, an outer and inner wall, and a bunch of smaller mosques. Enough of the ruins were left that it was easy to see how the buildings were laid laid out: the different courts in the palace, the rooms in the houses, the separate women's area in the mosque. And, I can now recognize an ancient Swahili lavatory on sight, without having to resort to my guidebook to explain whats what.

An extra bonus at Gede was the Sykes monkeys. On of the local "beach boys" (people on the coast, usually young men, who make their living selling trips, souveniers, hotel rooms, etc. to tourists) told me that I should go to the ruins in the late afternoon so that I could see monkeys. I wasn't going to see monkeys so I went more toward the middle of the day. And, it seems that no one told the monkeys that they were supposed to be staying out of sight due to it being in the middle of the day.

There were families of monkeys everywhere. And the monkeys were not afraid of me. At one point I heard some rustling in the trees and turned to look and see what was there. It was a monkey -- who had heard me and turned to look and see what was there. We watched each other for a minute or two before we both moved on. I continued on to some ruins and when I turned around to go, there were two monkeys right on the path I needed to go on. I didn't want to scare them or get bitten, so I pulled out my binoculars adn watched them. Then, one of them starting coming over toward me (or, perhaps my banana, but either way...) And he got too close for my comfort. They have big, sharp teeth. So I walked a away. And he followed me. He either did not know the meaning of "shoo" or, more likely, didn't care. Happily, though, when the monkey moved closer to me I was able to escape down the path and head back the way I wanted to go.

The next day I went hiking in the Arabuko Sokoko forest. I actually enjoyed hiking around the ruins at Gede better, even though the forest is an official park and protected it. I mention my hike there only so that I call let everyone that I have now seen three of the rare golden-rumped elephant shrews which, naturally are neither elephants nor shrews. The have a golden rump (as the name implies) and a snout like an elephants, thought I didn't get a good enough look to really see the snout. For some reason they were not cooperating and wouldn't stand still for me to get a close look. I think they are some sort of large rodent, and from what I saw, the best way to describe them is to say that they look like a miniature version of an R.O.U.S. (If that makes no sense to you, go rent The Princess Bride this weekend.)

The other really fun thing I did in Watamu was go on a dolphin looking and snorkelling trip. It was a great day, although, as usual, things did not go exactly according to plan. Me, three British vacationers, our guide, and two boatsmen left around 8 in the morning to go find dolphins. The ocean was quite a bit rougher than I was expecting. We could feel each and every swell. I occasionlly looking back at shore, wondering, could I swim that far if the boat capsizes? The ride was also quite drenching since there was much sea-spray soaking us whenever we hit a swell wrong.

Alas, we did not see any dophins. Apparently the seas were too rough for them at their normal haunts. So we headed off to the marine park to go snorkelling earlier in the day than had been planned. As on Zanzibar, I was initially rather nervous about sticking my head under water and breathing through a tube. Happily, though, my mask didn't lead this time and I got over my nervousness and unease much more quickly than I had previously.

I was soon happily swimming among the fishies and not even coming up very often. And, oh my, there were tons of fish! Blue and yellow fish (sturgeon, i think...), a yellow and black angel-fish (not really an ange fish, but that is what it looked lik), a tiger or leopard fish on the corals, pastely ones, multi-colored with stripes, black and white fish with yellon on top and some with spots near their front. Big fish. Bright yellow fish. Brown spotted fish. And I am sure that I am forgetting so many. There were just tons of fish right around the boat. (Turns out that our boatsmen were feeding them.)

Because the seas were kind of rough (though not as bad at the park as when we were out looking for dolphins), it was sometimes hard to swin in the direction I wanted to go, but with so many fish it was perfectly fine to just stay in one place and watch them swim by. The visibility also wasn't great, but the fish were often so close that it didn't really matter. There were often fish within inches of my mask -- at one point one pretty pastely one couldn't have been more than an inch away.

The, the lowlight of my day. After a short break from snorkelling spent on the boat eating fresh, sweet pineapple and looking at the fish guide I got back in the water and, after less than five minutes something stung me between the third and fourth fingers on my right hand. It felt like getting pricked on a pricker bush adn I thought maybe a piece of seaweed. I thought perhaps it was stuck in my finger, so I brushed it against my left wrist hoping to dislodge whatever it was, if anything. Bad move. My wrist started to sting. At that point I felt it would be prudent to swim back to the boat. By the time I was up the ladder and into the boat it was hurting much more than initially. I handed my equipment off to one of the guys, announced that something had stung me, sat down in the shade and examined my hands. Didn't see anything. Asked the guys what might have stung me. They seemed clueless. I said -- maybe a jellyfish? They said taht yes, it was a jellyfish. Which it probably was. Of course, people have a habit here of giving you the answer they think you want rather than the real answer, so I'll never know for sure.

In any case, I sat in the shade on the boat absorbed in my pain and within a few minutes white swollen blotches appeared where I had been stung. For the next few mminutes the white blotches seemed to get worse. The guys said the pain would go away in a few minutes (which soon changed to 20 minutes and then a half hour or an hour) and one of them put something on the stings. I asked what it was and he said petrol... (In case you ever get stung, I now know vinegar or aloe are the way to go.) Whether it was the petrol or time I do not know, but the fingers on my right hand soon started to ache really bad and my left wrist got really itchy. Gradually, the pain, ache, and itch started to go away.

That said, there was still enough pain that I wasn't particularly keen to hop right back into the water. And one of the British women was feeling really sea sick, so we headed back in to shore early. By the time I got back to my hotel the pain was pretty much all gone and my finger was just slightly red where I had been stung.