Well, at the moment I am in bed feeling rather sick, but a week ago.. I was on the beach! I finally made it to the coast for vacation, and although it was too short, I had a great time. There ended up being seven of us who went together, but starting from different places, so I traveled the first leg with just my housemate, taking my first night bus from Busia to Nairobi. It was slightly scary but ended up being fine - left at 7pm Fri, arrived 5am Sat. At 6 we met up with four more people and tried to find a faster way to get to Mombasa than buses leaving at 8:30… in the process, one of the girls who I had just met got mugged! Yikes. We gave up searching for something else and grabbed chai and breakfast while waiting for the bus. The drive was nice and scenic, and we arrived in Mombasa at about 4:30. We met up with the last member of the group, took the ferry from Mombasa island to the main land, and drove ~40 mins or so to Diani Beach where we had booked a couple cottages. We also stopped at a Nakumatt along the way to stock up on food as we had a kitchen at the cottage. Despite a few issues (no hot water, flickering light, small leaks when it rained) the cottages were great! Mine was a ‘sea view,’ so I was probably.. 50 yards from the Indian Ocean. It’s low season right now, so the beaches were pretty empty, and really really nice.

Our first meal was at this nice restaurant in a cave! Like you go underground. Very cool setting and very good food - I had a crab dish that was delicious! I’ve been missing seafood a lot. After dinner we headed next door to the Forty Thieves Beach Bar, a restaurant/bar/dance club just on the beach - like you could walk off the dance floor onto sand. It wasn’t very busy but the DJ was good and it was so fun to dance barefoot and then wander along the beach. (We ended up going back to the same place Sat, Sun & Mon nights, and the DJ would remember the songs we had requested, like he played Lady Gaga for me again, haha). After getting back late Sat night I had a quick dip in the ocean! The next morning I slept in for the first time in ages, and when we all woke up we made a nice breakfast, ate on the porch outside, and then I spent the remaining ~3 or 4 hrs of daylight in the water! We brought a frisbee and played for ages in the ocean - so much fun. That night we went to an Indian restaurant, which was really good. Then beach bar-hopped a little but not much was going on so we ended up back at Forty Thieves and just hung out on a couch that was on the beach :) Monday we woke up, made breakfast again, and spotted some camels walking along the beach - I was pretty surprised. Someone in my group went down to see what the deal was, and ended up doing a good job of negotiating the price to ride. On the three camels there was room for five of us to ride, so I rode a camel!! Totally absurd. It felt a bit like I was on a rodeo bull or something at first - as soon as I put one leg over its back, the camel shot up and went kind of crazy. I didn’t fall though! I was on a double-humped camel and after maybe 15 minutes Nadir & I realized that the seat thing was sliding off to the right and we were not in a very stable position. We got off, after the camel went crazy again. Oh yeah, and the ride was $2/person! After that we walked down the beach for awhile.. Bast & I bought some cool shells from a guy, I bought a few kangas from a small shop, and we wandered into this super swanky resort place (where they basically kindly asked us to skedaddle, haha. Unless we bought a day pass which was a little tempting when we smelled the food). Three of the girls were heading back to Nairobi a day earlier than the rest of us, so we split up and got a late lunch as they went back to get their things and leave. Back at Forty’s again, we shared prawn samosas, crab spring rolls, a mango prawn salad, and cheeseburgers & fries. It was so so good. We got back to the cottage near sundown and went for a moonlight swim - it was amazing, you could see SO many stars in the sky. It was a great end to our time on the beach. We went to this great Italian restaurant for dinner and shared crab ravioli, prawns in vodka sauce, lobster risotto, and one other dish that I’m blanking on. Great food, and gelato for dessert! And then we ended up at, yes, Forty’s, for a last night of dancing with some mutual friends we had met earlier in the day. (BTW, Norwegian girls = craaazy dancers. Like really weird but entrancing).

The next morning we packed up, washed our dishes, checked out and took the ferry back to Mombasa. We grabbed Swahili lunch, had something called faludas (?), like a milkshake with tiny tapioca balls and rose syrup and nuts, at an ice cream shop, and then Bastien and I went to Fort Jesus. We managed to get in for the resident price, and decided to go around on our own instead of with a tour guide. It was pretty cool though - lots to see, nice views of the rest of the city from the high walls. After we got tired of that we wandered through Old Town, which I really enjoyed.. lots of interesting architecture, and also just feeling like we were somewhere very far from Kenya. The whole trip was kind of like that - it just seemed like we were in another country. Other than the fact that the people still spoke Kiswahili, it was so different… I felt safer, I wasn’t harassed, much more diversity. We got pretty tired from all of the walking and sat by the water drinking fresh passion juice. Later we met up with Aleem again and went to see a movie - we were exhausted, and it seemed like a good way to spend our last few hours before getting on a 10:30pm bus to Nairobi. The only thing showing for that time was Prince of Persia, which was, you know, good for our purposes. The screen in the theatre was huge, and before the movie started everyone had to stand for the Kenyan national anthem! I hadn’t experienced that before. Anyway, took the night bus again, arriving in Nairobi at 6am or something. Walked to a coffee shop and chilled there for awhile, before catching flight back to Kisumu. The flight was full of Michigan State students - we kept getting confused for members of their group, haha. We grabbed lunch in Kisumu, took shuttle back to Busia, and got back to the house at around 4pm on Weds. I could have definitely spent more time on the coast - it was just so relaxing and peaceful and pleasant. But alas, work called, and now at least I feel very recharged for my remaining time! I’ll probably head to Nairobi for work next week, hopefully spend one of my last two weekends at Kakamega Rainforest, and.. yeah, that’s it! I leave so soon. Eek!

[Oh yes, and of course pictures from lovely vacation to come. I’ll wait until I’m at the office for the better internet connection.]