Lovely drive up the coast road from Kilifi to Malindi stopping off to check out Ocean Sports in Watamu for lunch. Malindi was a bit of a pit and having tried our luck again with the Kenya Wildlife Service who really don’t like independent travelers and wanted US$ 50 for us to park ….we ended up in the Red Cross car park for the night.
We noticed signs for an Eco camp on our way up the coast so we decided to retrace our steps to Mida Creek Eco Lodge which was wonderful. The only resident was an Herpetologist who had been there for a couple of months and had Malaria…well if you will go off into the bush looking for frogs in the rainy season what do you expect?

We were soon joined by a group of 7 Africa Asia Venture students who were enjoying a real “gap yeah” lovely crowd who we had seen at Ocean Sports earlier in the day.
From Mida Creek we went to visit the ancient Swahili ruins at Gede


and did a wonderful bush walk through the Cashew forest ( I didn’t know the cashew grew as a single nut on the end of a small soft fruit).
Hassan our local guide was incredibly knowledgeable, we saw a stunning variety of birds and butterflies as well as Baobab trees in full flower. ( I didn’t know Tartar came from the seed pods of the Baobab either!)

We returned to Ocean Sports for the weekend and Gail (pronounced Jail by the local staff) let us stay in the car park for one night before moving into our banda on Friday.

Lucy had stayed at Ocean Sports 30 years ago with her parents and had fond memory’s of a lovely holiday. Its still terrific and has a strong local following. The bar was buzzing most nights the local Hockey club played on Friday and they have curry lunch and live music on Sunday!

Ocean Sports

Having heard so much about the trucks on the Mombasa road we decided to brave it early on Sunday. Great idea the road was fairly quiet and we only saw 4 or 5 crashed trucks, although one accident which we couldn’t see had completely blocked the road, and we had a tortuous diversion on tracks through the bush which didn’t seem to slow the trucks down at all!
We stopped at Sagala Lodge close to the railway station made famous by the Man Eaters of Tsavo, a pair of lions who chomped their way through upwards of 135 construction workers in the 1880’s when the coast railway was being made.
After a night camping in the grounds of the lodge Anna who owns the lodge arranged for us to visit a Masai village and school close by. Two of the tribesmen had recently been ill and she had looked after them, so they were happy for friends of hers to visit the village.


I had a go too…surprisingly easy.


Extraordinary Masai pogo dancing

How many Masai can you fit in a van!

From there we cut off the main road and headed to Kalifi an interesting short cut which was blocked by rubble and earth works within about 500m but that didn’t stop us…

We decided to have a couple of weeks off (after nearly 7 months on the road!) so nipped back to England for an Easter break, Pippa’s 21st Birthday and a wedding invitation we couldn’t refuse ….thank you IM’s… the weather was beautiful and it coincided with a very wet patch in Kenya.

The van was serviced whilst we were away and is now looking and sounding perfect. Thank you Chris at Jungle Junction, who is quite simply superb and I cant recommend the camp too highly either. Next stop the coast near Malindi