Kenya Believe It?

By Andrew - February 15, 2024

For our final days in Kenya we decided to get away from Mombasa and head to the beaches. The drive was about 45 minutes so we got to see a little more of the world according to Kenya.

When we arrived to the hotel it was a bit like stepping into another world.

The "room" turned out to be more like an apartment, 2 bedrooms, 2.5 baths, kitchen, balcony, and walk-in closet. More than we could use for a 2 night stay.

So, one of the things we hoped to do while at the hotel was watch some movies, but unfortunately the free wifi was terrifically slow, so that wasn't very easy to do. We also couldn't figure out how to get hot water into the bath, so the tub wasn't used either, but other than that, it was a really comfortable stay. Having air conditioning was great, because even the ship is too hot most of the time when at port.

The best part of the hotel was the pool and beach access.

It's so hot in Kenya we were eager to get to the beach or get in the pool, but first we needed some diner. We had seen one restaurant down the road from our hotel that we could walk to.

Unfortunately we were not able to photograph our amazing meal because it took, not kidding, HOURS to be made. This is something we have learned is common in, only Kenya, but throughout the world. Dinner is an event to be enjoyed, food comes as it is made, and the entire course will take what it takes. So, dinner was fantastic, but we weren't able to get back to the hotel in time to swim.

However, the following morning we went straight to the beach. There was a walking path from the hotel to the ocean. We learned the name of this stretch of beach was called "Pirate's Beach."

But here's the thing. The access to the beach is private, but the beach itself was not. No problem, right?

What we found was that the moment we left the private property of the hotel, we would spend EVERY SECOND of our time on the beach turning down vendors who wanted to either sell us souvenirs, or sell us an experience.

Such as riding a Camel. After some persistence, the camel's owner moved on.

However, we didn't make it far before another friendly dude came and started giving us a tour we didn't ask for. Here's Jacob's "no thanks" pose.

What was kind of cool about this beach, other than the perfectly white sand, was the tide pools. When the tide is out in the morning, the shallow waters revealed a lot of sea life, if one knew where to look.

And there was a guy there who knew where to look, who was more than happy to show us around.

He has us follow him way out into the open ocean, every few feet he would pick up something slimy and disgusting to hand to us.

There had once been a restaurant on the beach; we were that it wasn't open, because it had quite an entrance.

We spent the rest of the day in the pool, which was large enough we could always find a place to be in the shade. After some discussion we concluded that this was indeed the nicest swimming pool any of us had ever been in.

We played "Vasco de Gama" (basically Marco Polo, but we changed it since Vasco de Gama was an explorer so heavily related to our trip).

We had a great time, but Kenya was stressful. We were told how friendly everyone was, but we only met a single Kenyan who didn't ask for money in exchange for their friendliness. One of our fellow voyagers who grew up in Africa explained that asking for small amounts of money was seen as something of a compliment, and was never thought to be rude.

Rude or not, it did make spending time at the beach a bit of a chore, rather than a relaxing time. But, we were visiting their beach, so I guess it's fair. And obviously our ability to stay in this hotel is a huge privilege, even though it was relatively inexpensive compared to something like this in the states. We'd never have been able to afford it!