But far too soon, Kenya called once more and we hobbled along her bad roads to see what the coast had to offer. Once again, our bad perception of Kenya was saved by the hospitality of friends from Seychelles who were there visiting family and invited us to stay. So we experienced Mombassa from the luxury of a family home while enjoying the company of friends! We did force ourselves to leave our sanctuary to take a stroll down the streets of Old Town and fight our way through the school crowds at Fort Jesus but our shameful highlight was an evening at the Go-karting track! Unfortunately my dreams of taking on Mark Webber were shattered as I crawled in second last but no one realised as everyone was somewhat more embarassed about being lapped about 100 times by Natasha's dad!
Malindi a little north of Mombassa was dissapointing in that we once more found ourselves camped on a questionable patch of grass in the middle of nowhere, desperately clutching onto our clothes when braving the shower so as not to drop them in the conglomeration of about 20 years worth of mould and wishing for the re-emergence of platfrom shoes onto the fashion runways so as to avoid the accumulation of toilet matter on the side of the pit toilet that had also never been cleaned! But there is one way to make yourself forget all this, and that is spending money! Lots of money on kokois and sandals and an extravagant lunch and 2 drinks each! We did also take the time to visit the Gedi ruins of an old Arab trading settlement but the 10 year old building donated by the EU that served as an entrance looked more like a ruin.
Kenya did however finally redeem herself when we travelled a little south of Mombassa to the tiny beach village of Tiwi, where we camped amidst lush palm trees practically on top of the beach with working and almost clean showers and toilets that actually flushed! And when we saw a GP registered Land Rover pull in, we wasted little time in going to introduce ourselves and enjoy some different conversation again. As it turns out Kobus (from SA) and his wife Krista (Canadian) live in Dar es Salaam so the four of us soon got to chatting like old friends and we practically didn't leave them, joining them in their camp for sundowners each evening.
The last item on our Kenya itinerary was a snorkel in a reserve on the southern border but when we found out it cost R1000 for the half day trip, we spent our last night on another questionable patch of grass in someone's backyard and made a beeline for the border the next day!
As fate would have it, we crossed the border on the weekend when all of Kenya and Tanzania celebrated the end of Ramadan, so although the border post was open and as efficient as ever, we couldn't get 3rd party insurance anywhere, and of course we would get stopped by the police for only the 2nd time on our trip when we don't have 3rd party insurance! With the football world cup being very much over, there was little we could chat about to distract them, but Shaun's winning smile managed to get us off with a promise that we would get in the next town. With everything being closed however, we skirted along the dirt roads like two kids who had just stolen the last liquorice allsort and ended up staying in a different place closer to town so that we could get insurance once the weekend ended. Run by expats, each campsite had its own boma with electricity, the showers were clean, hot and even had hooks AND a shelf for your clothes, and the toilets actually flushed too! SO we stayed a little longer just in case we would never see such luxuries again! After a brief stop in Bagamoyo just north of Dar to see some more old buildings and carved doors, we headed to the sanctuary of our new friends Kobus and Krista's house where we were staying for the night and leaving our car - our company around the campfire obviously hadn't been THAT bad!
Zanzibar was always going to be a treat but Shaun had obviously had Rockerfeller flakes for breakfast because the hotel I chose with clean bed, en-suite bathroom and flush toilet were aparently not good enough and I was frogmarched further into the narrow alleys of Stone Town to one of the hotels listed in the "Top End" section of our guide book. OK, it was housed in an old palace complete with princess balconies and mosiac pool so I didn't put up much of a fight, and we spent our three days there exploring the maize of alleys with intricately carved wooden doors from the luxury of our air-conditioned hotel room. The evenings were spent rubbing elbows with what must have been every single other tourist on Zanzibar over cocktails at historic Africa House while watching the sun set over dhows and waving palms. We did still manage to keep some of the traveller in us and braved the night market for food each night. African politics however delayed our departure as the larger and more luxurious ferry simply didn't depart as scheduled because it was being kept for some fat government official, so we were all kept sitting on the dock for 3 hours in the raging sun until the official decided he would arrive, and we all pushed our way like animals onto the ferry, everyone fearing that we wouldn't get space. By the time we eventually left, the sea was wild from the wind and not even a bad Sly Stalone movie could keep everyone from reintroducing their breakfast to the world. Shaun had no qualms as he grazed his way through an entire Pringles tube, while I had to stare out at the horizon and block out the wretching noises coming from just about everywhere!
We spent one more night in luxury with Kobus treating us to a good old South African potjie and far too many drinks before we headed south for one more Arab ruin (aparently the most important on the East Coast) at Kilwa Masoko and then hit the road to Mozambique over the newly built Unity Bridge, which replaced the rickety old boat that used to take vehicles and passengers accross the river.
The young border offifials on the Mozam side were far more interested in chatting to their friends than checking our paperwork and before we knew it we were trying to dust the cobwebbs off of our Portugese from South America 3 years ago. As we were still throwing out all of the 3 words we could remember however, the brand new tar road we were so enthusiastically travelling on just stopped and dissapeared into a tangle of bushes . . .
