Camels, Keys and BCD’s in Watamu

After learning about the potentially dangerous road north to Lamu, Marieke and I decided to head back south and let Steph take the risk and rewards. We decided to go to Watamu, a beach town a half hour from Malindi. Watamu has some nice beaches and a marine park where you can scuba dive. We’d been looking forward to diving in Tanzania and, if nothing else, we’d refresh our diving skills before getting there.

We booked a hotel room online and, after some intense negotiations between the tuk tuks and matatu drivers we settled on a tuk tuk to take us there. When we arrived, our hotel wasn’t where it appeared on Google Maps and we weren’t sure where to get dropped off. We decided to get off on the main road and walk in the direction of the beach, hoping we’d find our spot. As we walked under the hot sun with our bags weighing us down, a number of local guys came up to us and asked if we needed anything. We brushed them off, knowing they were just looking for money, but one of them was very persistent. Eventually we gave in and told him the name of our hotel. He didn’t seem to know where it was anymore than we did, but kept walking along with us. Eventually we saw a building with the name of our hotel. The guy noticed as well and pointed it out to us. When we arrived, he lingered in the lobby as we waited to check in. Inevitably, he began asking to be paid for his “service”. We declined since we didn’t ask for his help and would’ve found the place without him. He kept pleading his case but we were in no mood for it. Eventually he left, but the next day he would spot Marieke as she was walking by a fancy restaurant and demand she buy him a coke for his services. This did not happen.

The hotel rooms all had Swahili animal names. Ours was Simba(lion), the next room was Kobe(tortoise). Ironically, we found out later that day that Kobe Bryant had died in a helicopter crash. Our room was nothing special, but it had a ceiling fan which was a godsend in the hot weather. The door to the balcony was broken and would not shut properly so I wedged a curtain rod between the doorknob and the floor to keep it secure. There was nothing we could do about the fact that there was no door at all to the bathroom. Good thing we were a few years into our relationship at this point. Later, Steph messaged us about how the airbnb we had rented in Lamu was the nicest place she had stayed for almost her entire trip.

At some point I reached into my pocket, only to find the key from our Malindi hotel. Being hotel operators ourselves, we know how frustrating it is when a guest takes their keys, so we now had to figure out how to get it back to Malindi. We tried texting Beatrice to see if we could arrange for her cousin, the swim instructor who we knew worked in Melindi, to drop it off for us. She could not get a hold of him so in true Beatrice fashion she offered to drive down and retrieve it. We could not let her do that. We decided to ask the hotel staff if they could help. We asked the guy at the front desk if we could send the key by matatu, but he did us one better and offered to return the key himself for a small fee.

With that dealt with we headed towards the beach to find a place to have lunch. We found a nice place up the road from the beach, but away from the tourist strip with cheap local food. Greens, beans and rice, of course. It didn’t take us long to find a booking agency eager to set us up with a dive company and after making arrangements for the following day with a man named James, we continued onto the beach, which turned out to be quite beautiful. We might’ve thought we were in the Caribbean if not for the camels grazing on the point at the far end of the beach. It looked like something out of a Star Wars movie.

Watamu has become a form of mecca for Italians. When the beach boys began approaching us to sell tours they all started their conversations in fluent Italian and looked shocked when we explained we were Canadian. Restaurant menus were also presented in Italian first before english and there were plenty of pizza options to select from. The beach boys were intense in Watamu. One got so frustrated that we would not buy a tour, or rent a beach chair, that he asked Marieke if she wanted to pay for his company when I was just out of earshot. He was disappointed when her answer was no.

After being pestered relentlessly by beach boys, we headed past the camels, and walked along the cliffs above the shore. When we got back we were ready for a sunset drink after a long day. We noticed a guy sitting on a beach bed holding what looked like a fancy drink. We asked if we could order drinks here. “Yes” he replied, in a German accent. A waiter soon arrived and we ordered a beer. The German guy’s name was Lars. He was on a solo vacation and had befriended an Italian woman named Louisa, who was 80 years old, but definitely young at heart. Louisa arrived shortly after and we introduced ourselves. Her english was limited, but she spoke German so Lars was able to translate. Every now and then she’d get up and walk down to the beach to dance by herself to the music coming from the bar.

As the sun went down the four of us decided to head to a nearby restaurant for dinner. It turned out to be a very strange restaurant. They had a very limited and expensive menu handwritten on a scrap of paper, but the wait staff were dressed in t-shirts and barely acknowledged us. It was clear that we were getting the tourist menu and Louisa was having none of it. We decided to try our luck elsewhere and found a nice pizza place. We had a great meal before saying goodnight to Lars and Louisa and headed back to our hotel.

In the morning we were picked by the tuktuk our dive master James had arranged for us and taken to the marine park. We picked out our gear and headed to the boat. Diving with us was a middle-aged french woman along with her young local boyfriend, who stayed on the boat. We’d seen plenty of older westerners with young, good looking locals on their arms and these two definitely weren’t shy about their affections.

When we got in the water and started our descent, I soon noticed Marieke wasn’t with us. James signalled for the french woman and I to stay on the descent line. After a few minutes the two of them reappeared and we finished our descent. When we surfaced after the dive, Marieke explained that her BCD was leaking air (not great when you have a weight belt secured to your waist) and she had to get back in the boat to exchange it. Not a great start. The visibility was very bad and the current extremely strong. It felt like being in a washing machine. The diving definitely wasn’t great but we saw some cool sea life and it was nice to dive again.The boat ride had not been good for Marieke’s stomach so we spent most of the afternoon in our hotel room avoiding the heat.

Later on, we headed back to the beach for sunset and walked out to the point to get some photos of the camels. We were soon swarmed by beach boys trying to sell us everything under the sun. We tried a new strategy of talking in a different language to discourage them. Marieke spoke to them in Russian while I repeated the few Polish words I know. They were still persistent but eventually walked away frustrated and likely thinking we were crazy.

On the way to the pizza restaurant the night before, we’d passed by some street vendors cooking BBQ and fries and we decided to head there for dinner. It was delicious and the cheapest meal in town (other than beans, greens and rice) with a great atmosphere we thoroughly enjoyed.

The following day we headed to the Gede ruins, a medieval Swahili site just outside of town. The site was pretty impressive and our guide was friendly and knowledgeable. We’d read about the monkeys that live at the site and had brought some of our very past-due fruit from Nairobi to feed them. The guide coaxed one of them to jump on my back for a piece of banana. It was a bit unnerving but this is a common practice for the monkeys here. We also offered the monkey a tomato, which he gladly took but, after trying a bite, threw it away.

From there we visited the snake conservation center. When poisonous snakes wander onto someone’s property, they call the conservation center to take them away before being released in a suitable area. There was a Boomslang that kept striking at the glass trying to bite us, a Puff Adder who puffed in and out louder and louder as we got closer, a couple of Spitting Cobras that couldn’t be coaxed into spitting and a Black Mamba, another Kobe Bryant omen. The wood and plexiglass tanks they were in didn’t seem totally secure and it made being around the serpents that much more real.