© Richard Randall

Caribbean

Sundries

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.

We went into Le Bistro the next morning to see if he had returned with the money as promised, he had not been seen. In fact right up until we left Mombasa weeks later he had not paid them the money he owed, and his clothes were still behind the bar! Hopefully now he will think twice before ordering drinks he hasn’t got the money to pay for. We felt bad as we had been chatting to this guy so we offered to pay his bill, it didn’t seem fair that the owners should be so out of pocket. But they wouldn’t let us, they said that it was their fault as he had done this before, and they should have made him pay after each round. They also said we spent so much time in there that their profits were up a lot! Our time in Kenya was not all about drinking, we were looking forward to going on Safari. We spoke to a couple of tour operators until we found one we thought we could deal with. Fortunately the tour operator we chose was based on Moi Avenue, a couple of minutes walk from the Manson Hotel. We went there early one morning to book some Safari adventures. We liked the sound of Shimba Hills and Tsavo, so the bargaining began. Once we had agreed on an acceptable price we booked our two Safari adventures, one would be a day trip, the other an overnight trip. We were quite excited now that it was all arranged, it would be nice to get out of the town, breath in some fresh air, and hopefully see lots of animals. I always kept in close contact with my mummy whenever and wherever we travelled. As well as receiving letters from her via the American Express office in Mombasa, I liked to e-mail her. There were internet cafes locally but on this trip we had taken our laptop with us. The staff at the Manson Hotel were so friendly and helpful, even calling an engineer in to sort out the phone line for us, so that we could use the computer in our room. We had already arranged before we left London for a dial up internet account with Africa online, which meant that it would not cost the hotel anything, we were billed directly for everything. It took a bit of sorting out, these things are never as straight forward as they should be, but eventually we were up and running, excellent. I e-mailed mummy to let her know that we were off on Safari ... Yippee!

SHIMBA HILLS NATIONAL RESERVE & SHELDRICK FALLS

The first Safari we went on was to Shimba Hills National Reserve. We had chosen to go alone, so there was just Richard and myself and our driver/guide, we set off in a huge four wheel drive. Shimba Hills was perfect for a day trip as it is so close to town, only about 30km from Mombasa. We couldn’t wait to get there, and listening to our very nice and knowledgeable driver made the journey pass quickly, it seemed to take about five minutes. Shimba Hills is 74 square miles in size, and around 500 metres above sea level. There is accommodation at Shimba Hills at the Shimba Hills Lodge which overlooks a beautiful lush green glade of dense rain forest. The reserve consists of both open grassland and dense rain forrest with amazing views across the Indian Ocean. Shimba Hills were gazetted as a National Forest in 1903 with the grassland area being incorporated in 1924. It was in 1968 that most of the reserve was double gazetted as the Shimba Hills National Reserve. The reserve has 153km of road all of which was pretty bumpy, so sore bottoms for us, even in a comfy four wheel drive. It was not long before we spotted our first animal, an elephant. Needless to say we held the camera to our eye and it pretty much stayed there for the day. There was an amazing amount of animals, I think we saw at least one of every animal they have there. Our driver was amazing, he seemed to have x-ray vision, pointing out everything for us long before we had spotted it. He stopped frequently for us to get a clearer look, and often reversed for us if needed to take photos. The morning seemed to fly by and we went to the lodge for a break and a much needed drink. We got our driver a drink, but he didn’t want to come inside the lodge, he was happy to stay outside chatting with some other tour operators. Our driver said he would be waiting outside whenever we felt like returning to the car. We sat out on the terrace at the lodge talking about all of the wonderful animals we had seen so far. This trip was in the days before we had a digital camera, we couldn’t wait to get our film developed. We had taken lots of rolls of film of many different animals, elephants, giraffes, zebras, lizard, roan antelopes, sable antelope, ostriches, warthogs, and buffalo. The lodge at Shimba Hills had been built in a very respectful and thoughtful way, basically it was a large tree house nestling in amongst the trees. The interior was very rustic with lots of exposed areas of stone, and it had a very relaxed quiet feel to it. After rehydrating ourselves we headed outside to find our driver, he was ready and willing to drive us round some more. I think that we had been lucky enough to have seen most of the animals already but we didn’t want this wonderful day to come to an end. We drove round and saw lots more animals, our driver stopped suddenly and jumped out of the car all excited, he picked up a tortoise to show us! As we had no doubt seen practically all of the animals at least once our driver took us to a waterfall. It was called Sheldrick Falls and it was lovely, when we arrived there were only a few other people all splashing about in the wonderfully cool water. Apparently it is not unusual for elephants to come to the falls so it is advisable to go with a ranger. We sat on some rocks in the shade enjoying the change of pace, it was so cool and fresh by the water. We didn’t swim in the water but we did dip our toes in, and our driver took some lovely photographs of us with the waterfall in the background. By now we were feeling hungry and tired so we asked to be taken back to our hotel. Needles to say after all of the fresh air and with the intenseness of the day we slept very well that night.

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Obviously for this trip we had to take anti malarial drugs. We had taken them on previous trips but unfortunately this time they made me seriously ill. I felt very unwell most days, our doctor had told us that, ‘don’t quote him on it’, but the side effects can be relieved by drinking alcohol! Seriously, who would have thought a doctor would suggest alcohol as a good thing? Anyway, on one particular morning after having a terrible nights sleep, complete with terrifying nightmares, I thought I would try his remedy. It was barely 10am, we left our hotel and walked out onto Moi Avenue, and headed straight to a bar where we knew one of the barmen very well. Thankfully he was on duty and was more than happy to pour me a lovely large cold glass of beer. It was odd for me as I am not really a drinker at home, my favourite drink is water. The beer certainly hit the mark though, it wasn’t long before I began to feel human again. This trip to Kenya practically turned me into an alcoholic, most days I was actually drinking more than Richard, and that’s not something that ever usually happens! I dread to think how many bottles of Tusker Beer I must have drunk over the month or so we were away. Good job it was quite weak at about alc 4.2%! With all this beer being drunk we did actually eat quite a lot of food on this trip, often three meals a day which is very unusual for us normally. Apart from enjoying lots of delicious meals at Le Bistro, we ate out a lot in the evenings at a place called Recoda. We had read about the food before we got to Kenya, and one evening soon after we first arrived in Mombasa we visited the Recoda in Nyeri Street Old Town. This branch was small and packed when we arrived early in the evening. The owner was very friendly and helpful, making suggestions of what to eat. There wasn’t really a menu, I guess the local people just knew what food was on offer. We were happy to let the owner bring us several dishes to try. We sat at a rickety pavement table as lots of mismatched plastic plates were placed before us. It all looked and smelt fantastic. I would say that Recoda was the best restaurant for Swahili food in Mombasa, and this one in the old town was one of the oldest restaurants in Mombasa too. It originally opened in 1942, and there were some photographs on the walls from this period. We loved our food, we ate a lovely creamy bean dish, some cassava, salad, and lots of tasty hot bread. This restaurant in the old town was only open in the evenings and the menu was mostly fish based. There was another branch of Recoda right near to our hotel on Moi Avenue which was open all day and the menu was much more meat based, which we preferred. The first time we went into the Recoda on Moi Avenue we were shown inside and seated at a table, behind the counter were several young boys cooking up a storm. There were lots of different piles of food, most of which it was obvious what they were. We pointed to the food we fancied, and it was freshly cooked for us. We had asked for a couple of bottles of coke, which were brought to our table straight away. The young boy who served us our drinks, tried to clear the table with the back of his hand. It had scraps of food on it, which meant that it was of great interest to quite a few insects of various different shapes and sizes! We told him not to bother, he was fighting a losing battle, anyway I would prefer the insects to be on the table where I could see them than on the floor crawling up my legs! He shoved some more insects off of the table and more appeared from nowhere! I thought it was all very amusing, which was weird as before now this would have put me right off of my food.

Oceania