Lamu Tamu

Lamu was wonderful. 20% crazy, 80% chilled out. The crazy part was our hotel the first night:
The hotel was great, cheap, and semi-clean, but the family that lived next door kept their mentally sick family member chained to the roof, 1 meter from our bedroom window. He shouted non-stop the entire day, until 1 am at night, and started again at 4.30 am. He didn't seem to upset about being chained to the roof, because he mostly screamed "I want cigarettes! Give me cigarettes!" or "I love YOUUUUUUU". But whenever he saw that we were in our room, which was quite often, as our curtains kept blowing open from the wind (no window), he would try to shout to us (again, mostly cigarettes). Then, later at night, when we were in bed, he would start whispering "I want to have sex with you, have sex with me, kiss me kiss me, mwah mwah". When we finally got up the next morning, the family started whipping him. Needless to say, we had a serious discussion with the owner the next morning, got our money back for the next days that we'd prepaid, and got away from that place.
So we spent the next three nights at a quiet hotel in Shela (at Lamu Island, 40 min walk from Lamu city). The beach was AMAZING. The first day we were there, we were completely alone. I looked around, and as far as I could see counted a total of ten people and two camels.
We also went fishing with a dhow. Not much fishing, but a lot of waves. Was fun when I wasn't too focused on not vomiting. After half a day, we spent the rest of the day at the beach at Manda Island, where we had lunch, and just hung out in the water.
The last day we spent walking around in Lamu. Love it. It's such a tiny town, and the main street is just 2m wide (big enough for two donkeys to pass each other).
This morning we took the bus back down, and are currently in Malindi. We're staying at Tana Guest House, which is REALLY cheap, but then I've got more money to spend at Diani Beach next week, which I'm really looking forward to. Malindi is so strange. Italian. VERY italian. Bought gelati an hour ago from a man (living in Kenya) who refused to speak any other language than italian.
Well, that's about it. Here are some pictures from the last days:

Dhow trip

Lunch at dhow trip

donkeys...

Lamu

Main Street, Lamu

Lamu

Shela beach

Shela Beach

Kristen, Kristen, me

Bus, this morning

The lazy life in Mombasa.

The last days have just been about relaxing and hanging out. There's been a lot of backpackers by (most of them solo travellers), and we've spent our time at the beach and the hostel. Danes, swedes, germans, australians, english, french and a whole lot of canadians. Have been to some quite good parties the last days too. Yesterday was full moon party at the beach. We're not sure if full moon was friday or saturday, but the party on sat was great fun anyhow!
Don't really have much time to write at the moment, or much to write about even, but tomorrow I will be going to Lamu with the Kristens. I've found two new canadians, even though I still love my old ones. They're both named Kristen, which makes it easy to remember, but a bit confusing to talk about them.
Anyway, Lamu is about a 7 hour bus ride up north, at the coast. The city is on an island, and supposed to be the most beautiful of the old swahili cities. The island only have one car, everything else is done by donkey, so this can become interesting! After spending some days in Lamu, we'll go south again, to Malindi, and then past Mombasa down to tourist paradise Diani Beach. If I'm still with the Kristens after this, we'll go into Tanzania. Kristens birthday is March 16th, so if anyone happens to be at Zanzibar around then, contact me. There will be an awesome birthday party!

 

Life is good.

Beach and Body

Things have been a bit boring the last few days, so today I went with Dean, a 40 year old man from Manchester (it's impossible to understand anything he says) to the bank, and then to see the beach. Weather was as awful as it can be here: cloudy... So no swimming, but nice views.



 Got a bit tired from all the English people at the bar asking if I was Dean's girlfriend or wife, so decided to go back. Dean told me to go right, walk straight forward for 5 min, go left, across the roundabout, and get a matatu from there. I did go right, but got lost...But the good thing about Africa is that someone always wants to help you, so when I had decided I'd gotten lost, I just took a tuk-tuk back to the backpackers. Easy. Oh, a tuk-tuk is a small thing, with a moped-engine, three wheels and three seats for passengers. Simple taxi, really.

Why the title says "body"? Well, when Dean and I walked down to the beach, we came across a dead body, washed up from the ocean. Somebody else had already found it luckily, and covered up most of it, but you could still see his arms and legs, which was not a pretty sight. The locals said he'd probably fallen of one of the big ships passing by Mombasa, as they weren't missing any local fishermen, and the body was wearing too much clothes to be a fisherman. According to Dean it'd had to have been at least 5 days in the ocean before being washed up. Nasty.

Also, this is where I currently live:

Fort Jesus, Mombasa

Pole pole in Africa

I've finally managed to get over to the internet cafe, a 2 min matatu (overcrowded kenyan maxitaxi/minibus) away from my hostel. I've so far lived a very relaxed (pole pole is swahili for slowly slowly) life, waiting for the ultimate, or any, travelpartner to walk through the gate. So far most people I've met have been about to start volunteering, or about to fly out of the country....or they're a bit old (no offence), and I kind of want to find someone who's less than 30 years old.
The place I live at is pretty good, with a swimming pool (!!! this is a hostel, so that's just amazing), and cool people coming and going. There's a surprisingly big amount of Scandinavians around, probably because "all scandinavians take two gap years after high school".
Yesterday I finally managed to get into town, together with a dutch/australian guy named Derk (Derek). I took a lot of pictures, but as the pictures are on my camera, and I am on the internet cafe, I'll just have to add a few pictures from google for now.

First we went to Fort Jesus, in the old town. It's a fort built by the Portuguese in the 16th century, and later used by the Arabs, and others. The view was pretty nice, and I took quite a few good pictures inside. Have to remember to add them later.

Then we walked through a few of the streets in the old town. It felt like being back in Stone Town, Zanzibar, for a few minutes, but Stone Town is so much nicer.
After some more walking, we were finally back in the city center, and even though I've never been anywhere with so many people, I heard surprisingly few "hey sistah, come here" and "mzungu, looking is free", which was a nice change from Arusha.

Except from yesterdays tour of the city, I've spent most of my time at the hostel, with the other guests, and at the huge supermarket where I am now. Hopefully things will speed up a bit, but right now I don't mind relaxing a bit. New people come (and leave) every day, so now I'm gonna pick up a few things from the supermarket, and take the matatu back home to see if anybody's arrived yet!

PS: My phone pretty much died on Friday, so my new phonenumber is now +254700026879!