Saturdays at the Beach

It didn’t take us long to find the beach and make it part of our routine. While the actual city of Mombasa is an island, it doesn’t have any beaches. However, where we live in Nyali, just to the north, the beaches are beautiful soft white sand including a large reef and the warm waters of the Indian Ocean.

We learned the hard way that staying on hotel property is the best way to enjoy the beach. They are very welcoming and accommodating especially if you spend some money there. We love to do laundry in the morning and then reward ourselves with lunch at the hotel, poolside, overlooking the blue water. Our first week at the beach we were so excited to feel the sand in our toes we headed straight there and little did we know that as soon as we hit the sand we were the prime target for the beach boys. Unfortunately these beach boys won’t sing us a good song, just the “welcome my friends, come see what I can sell you” song that we’ve heard so many times. We walked about 20 yards and were not left alone and could see several more headed our way so, disappointed, we headed back to the hotel. We have since learned to enjoy the beach from our favorite hotel, Mombasa Beach Hotel. We have made some friends with the staff and learned that if we leave our things at the hotel and look like we have nothing with us we are mostly left alone as we enjoy our long walks on the beach. It is so nice to be able to relax and finally have a good reason to feel hot and sticky!

I'm SO excited to be at the beach!

One of our first weeks, still a little pale!

Last week we gave into the tourists in us and rode a camel! We have seen them every week and it was something I couldn’t go home without experiencing. I thought it might be romantic, like riding horses along the beach, but it was way cooler than that! They are such huge animals! Our camel’s name was Bob Marley and he likes mangos and bananas. He got down on his knees so we could climb on and then when he got up with his back legs I was looking at the ground. Then he got up with his front legs and it felt like we were 10 feet in the air. It was a very cool experience.

We have only suffered the occasional minor sunburn and have thankfully not noticed any side effects from our anti-malaria medicine that can cause sensitivity to the sun! The beautiful Kenyan coast is something we have enjoyed getting used to and will miss a lot.