So its been a while since I've updated, so Ill do my best to highlight the past month or so.
I finished my finals and 55 pgs worth of term papers abou 2 weeks ago, which is such a relief. Between Uganda and this I didnt do much: just took it easy in Nyeri, worked at my internship, and made one journey out to Aberdare National Park where i saw elephants. Overall: not too exciting...Nyeri is pretty quiet. I think I certainly prefer Nairobi. There is much less excitement in Nyeri and it lacks the vivid cultural diversity and cosmopolitan feel of Nairobi, which is what I think mkes it such a great world city. In Nyeri its easy to get lost in the African-ness, and its easy to get homesick or frusterated with things that seem pointless in inefficient, but at the same time there is something nice about the rural-ness, the beauty, and the quietness. One slightly scary moment that happened though was when I was walking in Nyeri town to meet some friends for lunch and all the sudden saw some guy running at me out of the corner of my eye. I turned my head just in time to miss getting glue-laced spit strait in the face, but it did get my hair, and I could tell it was a guy too messed up on drugs to really know what he was doing. After the spit thing he hit me on the back (not hard since he was not really with it) and ran away. Luckily I wasnt hurt at all, and everyone around was super nice and made sure i was ok, but it was a little scary. I still get jumpy around random people now.
Anyway, moving on to the real adventures. After finishing finals and turnig in papers I started my beach travel along with 3 of my friends: dan, hannah, and drew. We took and overnight bus to Mombasa on a Thurs night, and arrived around 6 in the morning. From there we hopped on a 7 am bus to take us to Tanga about 4 hours from Mombasa in Tanzania. The border was slightly more legit than at Uganda (there were fingerprint scanners and no holes in fences, but the 2 hours from the border to Tanga where miserable, and the worst roads i've been on yet. From Tanga we took a matatu (or dala dala as their called in Tanzania) to Pangani, a coastal town about 1hr45 mins from Tanga. It was a tiny little town and because news of mzungus spreads fast, we were greeted within a minute or two by the guy fromt he tourism office. This was fantastic because it was already about 2 o'clock and we needed to hire a boat to take us to Zanzibar asap. Within an hour we were on said boat, a rickety looking wooden thing with 2 motors (in case one fails as we were told as a safety sell) and I think 4 lifejackets for the 4 of us plus 3 crew. The boat trip to Kendwa in Zanzibar took 4 hours, meanign we arrived navy seal style in the dark. Luckily, the sunset was pretty from the ocean. But back to our illegal immigrant style arrival:we litteraly arrived at the beach, in the middle of the night (well about 730, but it was plenty dark), and got of in knee deep water via cell phone light and approached the small string of Kendwa hotel/resorts that way. It was certainly an adventure. Luckily, we were able to hop between the 3 resorts and find the best deal on a bungalow for the next 4 nights. Zanzibar is honestly probally one of the most stunningly goergous places I've ever been. The sand is white and the water is that crystal clear turquoise blue that you always dream of seeing. We spent most of our time just lounging by the beach and enjoying the fun, young atmosphere of Kendwa, which is where a lot of young people and backpackers go. We did take one excursion, which was a amazing day of scuba diving. It was one of those trips where they give you a crash course in what to do (mainly in the boat ride over to the spot) and then you go.If the water at Kendwa was stunning, the water at where we dove was unreal. We scuba dived off this little island and coming up to it on the bat it looked like something was glowing around it. The water was such a vibrant turquoise it looked like someone literraly installed lights under the surface. And as the water got deeper, the shades of blue got deeper, going into royal and navy hues that were also beautiful. Diving itself was also amazing, we saw all sorta of really cool coral and fish, i felt like i was at an aquarium but one i got to swim around and explore. It was fantastic.
AFter 3 days and 4 nights on Zanzibar (which I already want to go back to)we took a shuttle to stone town and began our journey to kenya, and our second destination. We were all a little neevous about this since the coast of both Kenya and Tanzania are predomenantly Muslim, and the whole Osama thing had just gone down. Luckily, we encounterned nothing negative the whole way.From stone town we hopped on the high speed ferry to Dar Es Salaam...which only took 2 hours and was air conditioned! We stayed a night in Dar, which was actually a pretty nice city that i wouldnt mind returning to. The next morning bright and early aka 6 am we were ona bus back to Mombasa, minus Dan, wh headed towards Malawi where he had some internship thing...a journey that eventually took him 30-something hours and a lot of detours and transportation changes. Our journey itself was pretty awful. The trip to Mombasa from Dar eneded up taking basically 10 hours, and it was hot and miserable. Ecspecially since East Africa doesnt seem to grasp the whole deoderant concept. The two hours from Tanga to the Border may have been some of the most miserable two hours traveling I have ever had. That night we spent in Diani beach, a beach just south of Mombasa. We stayed in a tree house. Yes, a tree house. I personally slept on the porch of said tree house, where I appreciated my mosquito net not to stop mosquitos (there were holes of course so they could get in if they wanted) but as a barrier against monkeys and bats...non of which i ever encountered thankfully). Hopefully there isnt a limit to how much DEET you can put on your body in a short period of time, because I literally slept with my bug spray and reaplied about every 45 minutes, plus used it as a weapon everytime i heard a buzz. Before my sleeping adventures, we ate dinner in a cave. Yes, a cave. It was fantastic.The walls were cave-like and it was open at the top to the stars. The food and service were both also fantastic, as was the wine....three things that mean a lot being in Kenya. The next day we once again started bright and early and took a taxi, ferry, and matatu on a 3 hour journey to Malindi, where we met up with two other friends: amanda and savannah, and took a flight to Lamu. It was so worth flying I was over busses. The flight was pretty sketchy though. It was a tiny airline and a tiny airport, where we took a tiny plane on a 25 minute flight. They never once checked IDs, and i managed to get on board with a lighter in my purse...so security wasnt on their game either. but, in hindsight, it all went smoothly. Although we all admitted later to being a little nervous when we saw we were sharing our flight with an old muslim women who had a head to toe burka...not a sliver of skin showing, not even eye slits, and she even had gloves. Lukckily, she was obviously old, being in a wheel chair and you could tell she was all frail and such, so I felt confident she was actually just an old muslim woman and not some person pretneding to be one, which made me slightly less nervous.
Lamu is a really cool town. It is an island in the Northern coast area of Kenya and is actually the oldest town in East Africa. It has no real roads, just windin alleys that are about 6 feet wide, if that. There are no cars, but about 5 thousand donkeys that move everything around. There are actually 2 cars ont he island...one belonging to the district commisioner, and the other is a donkey ambulance. There is also a donkey sanctuary. Thakfully, the town doesnt really smell so bad becuase people are hired to clean the alleys often, and there is a really good drainage/sewage system. We stayed in a "coral castle" on the top floor, where we had a nice view of the city. Unfortuently, the water on the Kenya coast isnt as nice this time of year, due to changing weather stuff, so it wasnt the crystal clear blue you usually get, but it was still nice. We travelled to the beach via boat taxi, and being the low season, had basically the whole thing to ourselves. It was beautiful, with big dunes and the tides created cool little islands to swim to. One day we all took a dhow trip, which is a traditional swahilli wooden sailboat. We fished and played on another, even more secluded beach. We also ate a delish lunch prepared by our captain, that included the fish we caught! It was really cool. That afternoon, me and my friend Amanda decided to try and find a place to get traditional henna, and stopped a lady walking when we saw she had some peaking out of the sleeve of her dress. We asked her where to get it done, and she took us to her house, where we met her family and her neighboor came to give us henna. I got my arms done, from the hand up to right beow the elbow, and a really bautiful flower design that should last about 3 weeks. Amanda got the same on her feet up to right below the knee. It was really cool to experience a bit of what family life is like, ecspecially for a muslim family in Lamu, and the women were very interesting to talk to. The next day we had an evening flight back to Nairobi, where once again I realised on the plane that my purse contained a huge aray of shoul-be-illegal items, including a lighter, leatherman pocket knife, and pepper spray. Needless to say Ill probably avoid Fly540 in the future. But the fligh landed me safely in Nairobi last night. I plan on spending the day here, and heading back to Nyeri this afternoon, where Ill hang out untill I go to Nairobi the 18th when Penn State people come, and the 2oth, when Mom and Ally come, and I begin my next adventureL Safari!
