© Richard Randall

NAIROBI

We flew from London via Dubai to Nairobi, where we stayed for a couple of nights. Nairobi was much as we had expected it to be, except for me it didn’t feel the least bit threatening. I guess some people referring to Nairobi as ‘Nairobbery’ is bound to make you feel a little concerned. We took a taxi from Jomo Kenyatta International Airport to our accommodation. We had chosen one of the budget hotels in the River Road area, several streets back from Moi Avenue. Once we had checked in we went out for a walk round town. Nairobi is one of the largest cities in East Africa if not the largest, and as busy as you would expect any large city to be. The roads and pavements were full of people going about their business. We walked into the centre of town and found ourselves outside The Stanley Hotel (formerly New Stanley), corner of Kimathi Street and Kenyatta Avenue. We went in for a drink, and I wanted to call my mummy to let her know we had arrived safely. The Stanley Hotel was one of the best upmarket hotels at the time of our visit, and it was a lot nicer than where we were staying, so we settled in for a few drinks. The famous Thorn Tree Cafe at the Stanley was very busy, the service was excellent and everything was going well until the power went off. The power stayed off for ages, so bored of sitting in complete darkness we decided to leave and pick up some supplies. We headed to a nearby supermarket and bought some water and other bits. I didn't feel at all concerned walking along the streets of Nairobi, it didn't feel any more threatening than London at night. With the exhaustion of shopping for water we fancied another drink, which we enjoyed at a place across the road from the Stanley. Nairobi was just a stopover place for us, we wanted to get to Mombasa.

MOMBASA

We had intended to catch a train from Nairobi to Mombasa, but the day before we had planned to book our tickets, sadly there was a major train crash which resulted in the loss of many lives. As the train lines would be closed for repairs, we booked a flight to Mombasa. We landed at Moi International Airport and took a taxi the 10km to the centre of town to our accommodation. Mombasa is a coral island and East Africa’s largest port. Approximately four million people work in Mombasa with around 40,000 of them actually residing on the island, the others commute across the Likoni Channel by ferry. To make all of our travels possibly we usually stayed in budget hotels, but on this trip we chose nicer accommodation. For the first couple of nights we stayed at the New Palm Tree Hotel, described as a mid range hotel, it was situated on Nkrumah Road which is the continuation of Moi Avenue. We could see as soon as we entered the hotel that many years ago it must have been a truly grand hotel. Even though now the years had not been kind to it, it still had lots of charm and an air of grandeur. Our room was up on the first floor, and was absolutely huge, clean and complete with ceiling fans but no mosquito nets, which later turned out to be a problem. Outside our room was the rooftop courtyard which had sun loungers scattered everywhere, we could imagine how this area would have looked in its heyday. Lots of rich tourists relaxing on the loungers sipping cocktails as they were cooled by fans wafted by young boys. We dumped our bags and went out for a walk round town. Mombasa felt very nice, warm and friendly. As we were staying fairly centrally there was lots to look at on our walk. We were soon strolling along Moi Avenue and attracting quite a bit of attention, probably because we were the only white people. As we often did whilst away travelling, we had arranged with American Express for our mail to be sent to the local American Express office. It was situated on Moi Avenue, we went in and eventually they found some post for us, letters from home, nothing exciting. There were lots of reasonably priced places to get something to eat and drink on and near Moi Avenue. The first place we stopped off at was the Mombasa Coffee House, which was the Kenya Coffee Board’s elderly establishment and apparently served a delicious Pineapple pie. Well that was correct, they certainly did serve tasty pastries, the coffee was pretty good too. We walked round some more having seen the famous pair of elephant tusks that arch across both sides of the road outside the Wimpy. Unsurprisingly the elephant tusks are not elephant tusks at all but pieces of aluminium made to look like tusks, which is good news for the elephants anyway! All along one side of Moi Avenue were small wooden sheds selling the usual tourist tat, more interesting was what was behind these little lock up curio stalls, the Africa shaped fountain of Uhuru Gardens. There were a few larger shops that sold traditional African crafts. One in particular on Moi Avenue had a fantastic collection on offer. We went in and had a look round, the owner was helpful and friendly and didn't mind us picking things up and touching everything. We returned much later on in our trip and bought lots of things, carved wooden masks, statues, cloth etc, all of which the owner packed up carefully in boxes for us to post home to the U.K. Our first night at the New Palm Tree Hotel was not the best nights sleep we have ever enjoyed, the room was fine, the beds were comfortable but as there were no mosquito nets we were constantly bitten by some unwanted guests. Normally it’s just a matter of putting the light on and splattering the little bleeders against the wall (bad Karma I know), but as the room was so huge with very high ceilings this was not going to be an option. There was only one thing to do, we would have to move, which was a shame as we were both happy staying there, all be it mainly because it had the lowest priced beer in town, but the bar was less than exciting so move we did. After a bad nights sleep due to our mossie foe we were up bright and early, so we went out in search of somewhere new to call home for the next month or so. We knew that there was a possibility of some decent reasonably priced accommodation over on Likoni, so we headed over there for a look.

LIKONI

We got on an early morning Likoni ferry, which was free for foot passengers, across to Likoni. Likoni is a bustling creek side suburb of Mombasa, the ferry trip was nice and we were keen to start looking at accommodation. The weather seemed to be even hotter than usual the day we went to Likoni, with every step we walked we felt more and more tired. As there was no bridge to make it easier to get to Likoni this meant that Likoni had not been over developed and built up with four/five star hotels. It was a rather run down place, mostly residential and populated by workers who made the daily commute across on the ferry to the island. There was some accommodation there and we walked about 3km as we checked them out. After lots of walking and with the realisation that we were not going to find anywhere we liked to move to we decided to stop for a drink. We were so thirsty and by now quite desperate to get out of the sun, so we went into the first place we saw. It was the YWCA, which thankfully it turned out that you didn’t have to be young, female or Christian, well I was one of the three (female), so they let us in! We were made so welcome and instantly brought lots of sweet hot thick milky tea, (we usually drink it black), but this tasted absolutely delicious, more like a meal in a cup than a drink! We sat for a while supping our tea, for which they would not let us pay, we must have looked desperate! At the time we visited, Shelly Beach was the main place to stay, but for us there was not really much suitable accommodation to choose from. Oh well, it was worth a look and it made a nice day out. We decided to head back to the ferry and back to our hotel. As we approached the ferry terminal we were rather surprised to see thousands of people waiting in line! This was certainly much busier than the journey over that morning. There were people everywhere, on the road down towards the ferry, and standing all around as far as the eye could see. We guessed that something was going on, but what? It transpired that the then President ~ Arup Moi, was on an official visit to the area. As we were nowhere near the front of the half hearted queue it took us hours to finally board a ferry, after watching several leave fully loaded without us. Finally we boarded a ferry, it was dark by the time we set sail back to Mombasa.

MOMBASA

We were both very pleased when we finally arrived back at the New Palm Tree Hotel, this would definitely be our final night there. After another night being bitten by mosquitoes we were up and out early to find somewhere else to stay. We literally went to every hotel in the Moi Avenue area, we wanted to be very central. We walked round for hours looking at rooms, haggling for a deal on the room rate, and stopping off for the odd drink here and there, well it was hot and thirsty work! By the end of the day we were absolutely worn out, but we had found our new home. We decided on the Manson Hotel, Kisumu Road, which was supposedly one of the upmarket hotels but actually fell into the same price bracket as the New Palm Tree Hotel, or at least it did originally until Richard used his charm on the receptionist. I think she was quite taken with him and his gorgeous smile and twinkling green grey eyes. The Manson Hotel was fairly new at the time and very clean, there was a TV lounge and a bar/restaurant on the ground floor. Breakfast was included, but for the month or so we stayed there I think we only ate there once or twice. It was not that the breakfast was not nice, it was, lots of lovely fresh fruit, eggs, toast etc but we preferred going out on to Moi Avenue to eat breakfast at Rozina House Restaurant. The owners of Rozina House Restaurant were so friendly and the food was very reasonable, fresh and delicious. We didn’t actually do that much on our trip to Kenya, in fact I often say to Richard that we don’t so much go for the travelling as for the experience of tasting the different beers and other alcohol based refreshment! Once we were settled in at the Manson Hotel, we did visit some of the local attractions and go on a couple of Safari adventures, well we didn't travel to Africa just for the beer!

Caribbean

Sundries

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