With Marieke still feeling the effects of a stomach bug she had in Mombasa, we decided to grab a Bolt taxi to the pier, to walk on the ferry to get across the water to the southern Kenya coast. Our driver kept trying to convince us to hire him for the whole trip to Diani beach, our final destination, but his under the table/off the app offer was a higher price than if we had booked directly through the app. Unsurprisingly, we passed on the inexplicably strange offer, and walked onto the ferry.

We were feeling pretty good about our decision as a breeze passed over us in the extremely humid air as the ferry moved across the water, but considerably less so as we trudged with our backpacks on to the pick up area, which involved walking through a very long, narrow, stifling and busy fish and fruit market. Dripping sweat, we finally reached the end and began negotiating with taxi and tuk tuk drivers, while checking our phones for a better Bolt price. Once again, the taxi and tuk tuk drivers tried to obtain our business by offering us much higher prices than quoted on the app (their attempted selling point was that it was difficult to use the app), and we soon waved goodbye as we grabbed a Bolt straight to our place in Diani Beach.

The original plan was to camp on the beach just north of Diani, which sounded great, but with Marieke still recovering, and not knowing what the washroom facilities at the campsite would be like, we booked a nice looking place about a 15 minute walk to the beach. The place turned out to be one of the nicest places we stayed in, and so when my stomach started to turn, we booked ourselves another two nights there and luxuriated in the large beds and well stocked kitchen. It was nice to be able to cook.

The beach in Diani is claimed to be the best in Kenya (pretty sure there was a sign claiming that), and we did love the endless stretches of sand and great swimming waters. Less so, the beach boys trying to hawk everything from drugs to keychains. Still, it was nice to get some real beach time.

From Diani, we were heading to Lushoto, in the mountains of Tanzania. We just had to figure out how to get there. We knew we needed to change transport in Tanga, Tanzania, we just had to figure out if we could avoid taking multiple matatus there, and having to walk across the border. After a lot of searching and asking around, we found a bus company that went straight there and we bought tickets for the next morning. We then tried to find a place to exchange our Kenyan Shillings to Tanzanian Shillings, but ultimately failed. It seemed no one sold Tanzanian Shillings, which seemed strange considering we were so close to the border. Eventually, we settled on selling our extra Kenyan Shillings to US dollars and started packing again for our journey the next morning.