Typed up: at Coral Cove Cottages in Tiwi Beach Posted from: Internet
cafe in Mombasa
Mombasa is
Kenya’s second largest city, with about 2 million people. It’s on the
coast, and the city center is on a peninsula. We spend all our time on
this peninsula. When we were coming here we were a bit worried, because
all the guide books etc. warn about crime (from scams to mugging). When
we were there, we felt perfectly safe. Like anywhere, if you stick to
the busy streets things seem to be fine. But not like anywhere in Africa
we’ve been, people left us pretty much alone. We were not constantly
hassled to buy art, tours, etc. This alone made us enjoy Mombasa. We
spent our days wandering around on foot, taking naps, and visiting the
Internet cafe.
We stayed at
the New Palm Tree Hotel. It was a little pricier than we would have
liked, but we got a double room, private facilities, a TV that wasn’t
plugged in, a refrigerator we didn’t use, and a fan. We did not have hot
water. All the rooms in the hotel are on the second floor, surrounding a
large courtyard. The center of the courtyard is taken up by a huge
skylight down to the main lobby. The other guests seemed to be about
half Africans and half other tourists. We didn’t talk to any of them,
except for Shakir, our neighbor. He’s visited Mombasa many times and
keeps coming back. With his bug spray we killed all the bugs in our room
one night, but I felt it involved a slightly scary amount of chemicals.
The main
tourist attraction in Mombasa is Fort Jesus, and we visited it. The fort
was build 1593-1596 by the Portuguese, who held onto it for 200 years
before Omani Arabs kicked them out after a 33-month siege. Entry into
the fort includes a personal tour, and our tour guide cleverly sold us
an extra tour of the surrounding old town and a few other sites. The
fort is quite cool, with some nice old architecture in pretty good
shape. We also got our first real glimpse of the Indian Ocean. We’d seen
the water in the bay in Tanga, but it’s not the same without waves which
we saw now.
There were
quite a few interesting lizards in the fort as well. And there was a
collection of old artifacts, several kinds of cannons used by different
people, and Dunga, our guide, explained to us the history of the fort
and a bit of the history of Kenya. Then we toured old town with him,
which consists of narrow streets, and mostly falling apart buildings
from a really long time ago. There is still some of the old architecture
left, mostly in the elaborate doors. Old town borders a market area, and
then we crossed into new town.
There’s not
much to say about new town. It’s a bustling area. We stopped at a Hindu
(I think) temple, which had some really cool painting/sculpture
combinations. We also visited the giant elephant tusks, whose
construction somehow relates to saving of the elephants. The part of the
tour after the market mostly felt like a lot of walking, though. Then
time came to pay he thought we’d agreed on 2500 per person, and we
thought it was 2500 total. (I still don’t quite understand why small
group guides charge per person.) Anyway, we compromised and that was the
end of official sight seeing for us.
We’ve been a
lot more adventurous regarding the restaurants we ate at, except for the
first night. That night we went to a nearby Chinese restaurant that our
guidebook said was good. It was good, but also expensive. Just coming
from Tanzania 2000 shillings sounded pretty good, but while 1 USD is
1170 Tanzanian shillings, it’s only 67 Kenyan shillings. Since then,
we’ve eaten almost exclusively at places which didn’t have any tourists.
The most adventurous was a place down a dirt aisle off a main road. It
was actually a lot like a restaurant at home. The main difference were
that we didn’t have a private table and there was only a verbal menu.
But it was cheap, and the food was good, traditional African food. We
ate at the hotel restaurant once, which wasn’t as good. And we ate at
several other small “eateries.”
Mombasa, and presumably most of Kenya, has fast Internet so I managed to
upload all the pictures taken so far (small size only). But even
Kenya-Internet was not good enough to book a flight with Egypt Air. Out
of desperation we decided to go to a travel agent, Dial-A-Tour, which
were half a block from our hotel. That was a great move. Not only could
they book the same Egypt Air flight we wanted, for the same price, they
even suggested we try a round trip ticket because it might be cheaper.
That trick saved us another \$20 per ticket or so. We might have to use
travel agents more often. I do like sending money into a small local
business instead of faceless online services.
Workouts: I’m going to get back on this horse, once every other day this
time. 8/25 I started 15 min AMRAP of: 20 squats, 10 push ups, 15 lunges,
5 pull ups. After 5 rounds and 15 lunges, 1:20 left, I gave up because
I’d ripped up my pinky on the rusty stairs I’d been doing pull ups on.
Then Danielle put some tea tree oil on my rip to sterilize it. There was
at least another round worth of pain in those few drops.
