Traveling to Mombasa & Lamu

Last Wednesday my friend Rich and I decided to take the night train from Nairobi to Mombasa, then head onto Lamu by bus. Although I had heard some horror stories of the train in some of my research back home, the pleasant and delightful reviews I received about it in Nairobi, gave me the little nudge I needed for a once in a lifetime experience.
We boarded the train at the station and met two young girls who I was to share a 4 bedroom cabin with. Rich got the room right next door, and we all hung out in the girl cabin and chatted a bit. They recommended a place in Mombasa to stay and we rang there to reserve a spot in the dorm. It didn't take long for me to switch rooms and bunk with Rich, as my claustrophobia was getting to me a bit.
The train was delayed about 30 minutes in taking off because they couldn't get the electricity to work. lol! When we finally got rolling, we poked our heads out of the room to the walkway and pulled down the windows to try and get some breeze. The air smelled of smoke, as it often does here, and as we passed by the slums, we saw pockets of people walking about and many cooking dinner over open fires alongside the tracks.
Shortly after moving the dinner bell was rung up and down the halls and a small parade of people, being bumped & jostled by the movement of the train, attempted to make their way down a narrow corridor through three cars. We filed into dinner car where we were greeted by white tablecloths covering bolted 4 seat tables. A nice dinner was served starting with soup and offering chicken, beef or vegetables with rice or roasted potatoes. The fruit cocktail at the end was delicious, as all of the fruit here is. We ran into Stuart and David, 2 Scottish guys from the hostel we were staying at in Nairobi. After chatting with them and deciding to travel to the same hostel, we headed back to the room for some cards then turned out the lights.
We opted to leave the window open for breeze even though we were told by two of the staff not to. Yes, I understand precaution, but it felt like it was 200 degrees & there was no way I was going to be in that tiny room with the door shut and the window shut, getting no airflow. Rest assured, nobody climbed into the window, and I would do it the same all over again. You would too....it was hot!
Quite please that I spent 3 times the price to avoid being cramped on a bus for 8-9 hours, I sprawled out to catch some sleep.......the train, however, did not have the same thing in mind. I think I dozed off in 15 minute intervals as the tracks twisted & turned, the breaks squealed, and I don't know how they laid the tracks down, but I lost count of the number of times that my body was tossed into the air, losing almost all contact with the bed below me. Each time I was made aware of the roughness of the trip, stories of train derailments danced back into my brain. Dramatic, but true. In the morning, Rich was thinking the same thing all night.
We had breakfast in the same place as dinner & woke up to a bit of coffee and fresh juice. Oh, did I mention how fabulous the fresh fruit juice is? Ahhh. Mango, pineapple, passion fruit, banana, avocado, yummy! Anyway, we had a bit of eggs, toast, sausage & beans (don't ask me why, though I think it's an English thing), as we watched the newly risen sun climb hire into the sky. It was very warm already.
The train ended up taking about 13 hours, which is 2 more than we anticipated. After haggling for a taxi, we started a long trek to the Beach Bar, which I would highly recommend to anyone. The trip there made me very leery, and the longer we rode, the more I was wondering where the hell we were going. But when we arrived, oh gosh.....a small bar to the right and tables and chairs looking out to the mangroves and Indian Ocean spilling right onto the beach and coral in front of you. It was paradise. All my doubt and fear went out the window and I felt guilty for having doubts about the place. The decorations included shells, nets, surf boards, old wooded boats. For use, there were quaint 2 bedroom rooms overlooking the water and a couple of dorms with sand for floors. There was also a tree house you can climb into and a couple other fun places to lounge.
We went to the left for a little walk on the beach and got to see little crabs running up the rocks/cliff drop-offs which met the beach, and were clearly warn by the high tides. Hermit crabs were everywhere, and we got to see quite a few lizards scampering about as well. The water was warm and the sun was hot. Seeing trees growing in the ocean was pretty cool too! :)
After grabbing some food, I decided to wander to the right, and walked along a long stretch of coral that met the water & dropped off. A local man came and spoke to me for a bit & after testing a bit of my Kiswahili, decided I needed to add a few more words to my vocabulary, and took a bit of time to write down some words and their translations on a piece of paper. He also let me know that he and his friends perform acrobatics for people, and if my friends and I were interested, to let him know. I wasn't 100% sure if that was a beach boy come on, or an honest business offer, but I decided to just tell him I was leaving the next day and that wouldn't probably work. You see, in Mombasa, there are beach boys who will often cater to EVERY need of a traveling woman who is not otherwise attached and has a little money to spend. It's like going on vacation and having an attentive boyfriend for your whole trip. Not exactly my cup of tea. Lol!
I got a motorbike taxi to take me up to a little wooden hut by the petrol station to get bus tickets to Lamu the following day, just to find that they don't sell them there. Deciding not to bump up and down on a motorbike for 40 minutes into downtown Mombasa, I opted to head back and enjoy the afternoon. Riding through the village, both ways, I was greeted by kids and adults alike with "jambo", which is kiswahili for "hello". So not the US. :)
Back at the Beach Bar, we drank a couple of beers.....okay, I had 3 and each of the boys had 9. I can't exactly keep up with that, nor did I want to in that heat. We chilled out, played Flowers, a Kenyan card game, and chatted while enjoying our front row seats to a spectacular view. Rich found a millipede, which he picked up with some sort of metal thing, and proceeded to show it to all of us. Expressing my discomfort with millipedes, he put it down and I watched carefully as it crawled away. For dinner, I got a lemon fish fillet and ugali. The ugali, which is corn flour and water (no, not like polenta) was too bland for me to choke down. Too bland to choke down, you couldn't just eat something plain, you ask? No. You have no idea what the meaning of bland is until you've eaten this stuff, and if you can imagine eating cardboard or styrofoam, that would be a more pleasurable experience! ;) On the contrary, the fish was absolutely divine and gave a new meaning to the word "fresh"! Fish is so fresh here at the coast. They catch it that day and cook it. You can tell someone in the morning what kind of fish you want and they can bring it from the ocean to you that day. Yes, really.
After a delicious dinner, we played some cards in one of the lounging areas. I took my backpack, with hand sanitizer and toilet paper, to the bathroom for a pee break and even though I don't know how it happened, when I returned to the card area and set the backpack I had been wearing down, a huge millipede was crawling right up top where my pony tail should have been hitting. Ughh. With 3 boys sitting around, a did let out a gasp, but managed to keep a scream out of the picture, and Rich was kind enough to remove the creature who he claimed 'looked mean' and was bigger than the one from earlier. After the encounter, I started to do the 'look around me for creepy crawly things every 1/2 second-thing' and decided it was time to go put together my little one person tent made to keep those suckers out.
My sleep went just fine and the 3 guys & I woke early to take a taxi to town to get a ticket and bus to Lamu, which is an island off the coast of Kenya. After getting there, we found the bus we wanted left an hour prior to when we thought, and we needed to kill a couple of hours before the next one. The man at the bus ticket counter recommended a hotel restaurant just a half a block down the road. We wandered down and happily found a table in the restaurant where we could plop ourselves and our backpacks down. The restaurant was Arabic, and I noticed very quickly that i was the only female in there, and unfortunately, made the mistake of wearing shorts; showing of the legs not looked upon so highly.
You could order white coffee or black coffee, but not really something in between. For white coffee, they bring out steamed milk, which you add an instant packet to. For black, they bring out hot water, which you add an instant packet to. Stuart mentioned his white coffee tasted a bit funny and as we perused the menu, we found camel milk as an offering and speculated as to whether or not that was the cause. Camel milk. Interesting. I was half-tempted to order some, but decided I didn't want to offend anybody if I couldn't drink it. One of the waiters came over to the table and I decided to order chapati instead. No dice. This is how it went: I said, "Hi, excuse me, but can we get a couple orders of chapati?"
Yup that's it. He stared at me for a minute, which I don't think was a friendly look, then turned and walked away without a word or any sort of acknowledgment. I don't know if it was the woman thing, or the shorts thing or what, but the chapati never came.
Boarding the bus, I didn't realize there was assigned seating and ending up creating a little traffic jam. I squeezed off and knelt facing backwards on a seat to let some people pass by and an old woman came along and started shoving past me to get to the window seat, but it was obvious that my foot was in the way and there wasn't enough room. I politely told her that if she stepped out, I could move and let her in. Since she did not respond, I repeated myself a little louder. Then again, a little louder. As she kept pressing and pushing, my ankle was turning a direction which it shouldn't go & I found myself getting quite loud and even got the assistance of interpretation from somebody. Although most people speak English, there are some exceptions, so it was nice to have someone translate, but even that did not help and the woman gave one last huge shove, pushing my foot well into the seat in the wrong direction, and I sadly must say that my temper got the best of me and I realized after it was too late that I had shouted, "Jesus Christ!" so that the whole bus could hear. They did hear. They all turned and looked at me too. They all must have been thinking what a rude American girl, shouting at an old lady. Granted, I felt badly for my comment, but if it was America, someone might have hit this lady she was pushing so hard. The concept of personal space doesn't have much of a meaning here, and shoving and squishing past people seems like a regular thing.
After we all managed to get into our assigned seats, catch this, that wasn't even her seat! Ugh! The bus, which started out with all persons seated, tended to pick up a bit more than it could handle and I found that for at least 30 minutes, I had some guys butt cheeks resting on my shoulder. Remember what I said about personal space? It had no meaning. The bus ride was hot and bumpy. The windows were all open, allowing a film of dirt to form on our clothes, skin and hair. Not that I was super-clean before, but this really gave me the oomph I needed to be disgusting. The bald guy in front of me looked like he had a whitish-tan buzz cut by the time the trip was over. When I went to scratch my face, it was grit on my finger rubbing grit on my face. Oh, and there was also a lot of sweat to help it stick. Yummy! Lol!
We arrived to the boat docks across from Lamu after a little over 7 hours of bus travel, which was 2 hours longer than I anticipated. We boarded the ferry and after about 15 minutes, took off towards Lamu. As we passed by the mangroves, the island started to reveal itself and I found myself looking at what reminded me of an old Italian city by the sea. There were boats bobbing in the water out in the middle of the channel and boats docked up right against the island. The buildings were old architecture and there were lots of them jutting up behind others. People and donkeys were bustling about the streets and there wasn't a car or motorcycle anywhere. It was getting dark, but you could still take in the beauty of it all. It felt old....really old....and authentic.
We got out of the boat and onto the stone steps which led from sea to land. We were planning on finding Casuarina, which is a hostel with good reviews, but a couple of men approached us and offered to take us back to a house with plenty of beds, a kitchen and a rooftop lounging area. We followed the men down the tiny streets, which are really walkways for people and donkeys, and tried to avoid the donkey droppings along the way. When we arrived, a locked door led you past the house boy's quarters, who stays at the place 24-7 & will cook and clean for free during a person's stay. There was a flushing toilet and 2 showers & once they brought out another mattress, there were beds for each of us. The rooftop was a table with chairs around it and both a thatch covering to protect from sun and rain and an open area to catch some rays. For 2,000 KES a night, which is not quite $26 USD, the four of us happily agreed, and plopped our bags down with grins a plenty.