So a week ago my friend Megan from Australia and I decided to do a weekend trip to Mombasa Kenya quite out of the blue! So we booked our tickets packed and off we went.
Here is the synopsis of how our adventures went there!
We left the house at 5:40AM on Friday to head to the bus, while waiting for the bus we met up with an American girl named Alli from Utah also traveling to Mombasa. Our bus left at 6:30 and then we ran into trouble just before 8AM. We had stopped at a little tiny bus station to drop off some people and as we were leaving there was a large snap! So back into the bus station we rolled, turns out we had snapped one of our wheel axles and needed to have both things that attach the wheel to the axle replaced. So we ended up waiting there a total of 8 hours. A very hot uncomfortable 8 hours that is, ha slightly irritating when the whole trip was supposed to take 8 hours, either way TIA This is Africa, it is to be expected with african transportation! Once we finally got going again it was smooth sailing, after everything was said and done we didn't end up in Mombasa until around 12. Then we had to get a tuk tuk and then take a ferry and then thank god we met the kindest man in the world, or I feel like we wouldn't have made it out alive through the next part.
We met this man named Masai who was just the happiest and friendliest old man, he was also going to Ukunda Junction...where our final destination was. So luckily we just tagged along with him, we had to negotiate with a taxi after the boda boda (motorcycle) drivers continued to stalk us like lions, and after dealing with angry probably drunk matatu (mini van) drivers. Masai was so helpful, he made sure that we got all the way to our campsite first before going to his destination, and was just so amazing haha! He was a priest but he had about 4 other degrees and seemed to do everything, he told us a bit about his life and it seemed like he had certainly gone through some hard spots in his life, it was amazing he could be so light hearted and happy with life after some of his troubles. In the end we finally ended up getting into our cottage at about 2 in the morning! And pretty much collapsed into our bed. Our cottage was actually really nice for the amount we paid for it 2,500Ksh (80Ksh = 1CND $)
Day 1
I woke up pretty early and went to read on our porch only to get completely immersed in that monkeys that were swinging through the trees right above me! When we actually decided to do something we walked down to a grocery store and bought our selves some groceries for breakfast, and just explored down the beach! Later on we went back to the grocery store and bought ourselves a feast of cheese and lunch meat for our lupper! Then it was back to the beach and hanging out in the cottage. Later in the evening around 9:30 we went down the beach to a bar and restaurant called Forty Theives and ate there, and then stayed and hang out with some new people we had met!
Day 2
I woke up in the morning and watched the monkeys again, and decided to give them peanuts. So I went to wake up Megan who had been bummed she didn't see them the morning before, and I not so intelligently brought out a whole bag of peanuts with me! So as soon as I sat down, the big mamma monkey literally jumped on me and started trying to grab my bag of peanuts ahaha and then it punched me before I basically pushed it off me and we ran laughing and screaming back into the cottage because it was trying to follow us into the cottage through the door, ahaha so in a sense me and a monkey had a fair fight. Afterwards we made up and I fed him from my hand! I even got a video of it! That was my monkey adventure!
We went to the beach again, and re met up with our friend Alli who had sort of disappeared all the day before. So we just hung out on the beach, had lunch again, and then we went and rode camels and explored some tide pools! We then for supper around 7 went to this restaurant called Ali Barbour's Cave Restaurant, which was the most amazing restaurant I have legitimately ever been to in my life! It was actually down tucked away into natural caves that hadn't been restored or anything just fixed with a proper floor and lighting and fixtures put in! The cave was approximately 180,000 years old they said, it was also an open cave so there was no roof to it so if you looked up, you were just looking up at the stars! Which are amazing here by the way! The food was also absolutely incredible, it was all around just great! We were stuffed and had a somewhat early night after that!
Day 3
We woke up to watch the sunrise and that was really nice, except that I didn't fall back asleep later. So I just watched the monkeys yet again haha! We met up with Alli again, and decided to go snorkeling so we went out on this tiny little boat out to the reefs and went snorkeling! It was pretty awesome, and really cheap less than 4 dollars for 2 and a half hours! Afterwards we just had lunch, packed up and headed back to Mombasa on the ferry. Here we tried finding a place to stay and ended up only being able to stay at the sketchiest looking hotel ever, the entrance was actually a dilapitated building with no lights and garbage! Ha the rooms weren't nearly as bad though! The three of us ended up sleeping in one bed though lol because none of us wanted to get a single room to ourselves!
We had ended up staying the extra day just because we had got no time in Mombasa because of our horrendous 21 hour journey there! We left early tuesday morning and made it back to Arusha before supper! So it was only a 10 hour drive that time!
Unfortunately I had to come home to really upsetting news, I found out that my baby at Cradle, Riziki had died Sunday night, I took it quite hard because it was just such an upsetting situation and her whole story was quite sad. It was much more difficult because although she had been sick before she started getting much better and putting weight on, so we all thought she was in the clear! It really is heart breaking, but she may be better off where she is now then being a sick little girl never to be adopted and suffer her way through orphanage to orphanage her whole life. She was loved dearly by the people at Cradle, and its the only saving grace that she was given so much love and good care while she was here with us.
R.I.P Riziki
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