The Kenyan coast : Tiwi, Watamu, Malindi

We enjoyed two days in the shady Twiga campsite at Tiwi beach. This gave us the chance to buy a new battery for our fridge (and computer), and to get used to Kenyan’s ways, currency, costs, and people.

Although the Kenyan coast is really stunning, but by now we are keen to move inland to some cooler weather. The tropical climate, hot and humid for our taste. First, we want to visit Lamu, an archipelago, just south of the Somalian border. It is another bastion of Swahili culture. It is smaller than Zanzibar and more isolated and cars are forbidden on the island. People use donkeys for transport….

En route from Diani/Tiwi beach to Lamu, we chose to bypass Mombasa, and drove instead through the Shimba Hills coastal forest.

We stopped over in Watamu for the night. There we visited a community project managed by A Rocha Kenya, which aims at preserving the Mida Creek estuary. This stunning mangrove is a stop-over to a large number of migratory birds. A Rocha (an NGO) educates the community about the potential for tourism and the economical benefit they can derive from maintaining its biodiversity. We enjoyed our visit very much and found the local guides to be very knowledgeable.

The second biggest town on the coast, after Mombasa, is Malindi. Maybe we were beached-out, but we didn’t find it anything special, apart from the fact that it has an Italian resort town. As you would expect, pizzerias and gelataria are common and we treated ourselves to a delicious Valentine’s dinner.