March 2011
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Mombasa-Nairobi
By the Sea – Malindi, Kenya
Mwembe
Resort, Malindi, Kenya
7-14 March 2011
What do
you do in a beach resort town popular with Italians? You go to the beach and you
eat Italian food. Our RCI timeshare had been exchanged for a week at Mwembe
Resort in Malindi, a seaside town two hours by minivan north of Mombasa. We
basked on the beach and swam in the resort pools. We bought homemade pasta and
Italian breads, had foccacia served instead of bread with dinner and had
excellent gourmet pizza for lunch.
The resort, owned by an Italian, was
several cuts above our usual budget accommodation. Mediterranean style bungalows
scattered throughout leafy grounds contain just thirty six rooms. A large pool
was just a few steps from our room. There was another smaller pool on the
grounds and a tennis court, which we didn’t use. Every afternoon tea and cookies
were served in an open area near the pool every afternoon. It was a relaxing way
to end our visit to East Africa in a spacious one bedroom suite with partial
kitchen. We alternated cooking our own simple meals with dinner in the very good
restaurant associated with the resort.
The resort is about 1 km from the
center of town but a convenient shuttle bus leaves at regular hours for the
shops in town. The shuttle bus also takes Mwembe residents to two different
beach resorts, both owned by Italians, where we could spend the day. The first
day we went to Rosada and rented two chaises facing the sea. We soon discovered
that although the beach was long and beautiful, the ocean swimming left
something to be desired. A coral reef lay about 500 m offshore sheltering the
beach. There were extensive sea grass beds just offshore, great for fish, but
not conducive to swimming. Except at high tide, the waters are too shallow to
really swim. We had long walks along the shore, found a shallow pool at the edge
of the water and read our books. The saving grace was the excellent restaurant
where we had lunch, and chatting to new friends staying at Mwembe, Penny and
Gordon Eaton, from Brighton, England.
After that first day we took the
shuttle to White Elephant Resort, a short distance from Rosada, to swim in their
seaside pool and enjoy their large chaises. Entertainment was provided on the
weekend by small teams of boys performing tumbling routines and looking for
contributions. Women selling sarongs and small trinkets and men offering boat
rides roamed the shore looking for customers. Many approached first speaking
Italian as that was the language of so many of the tourists. Salespeople were
polite, easy to talk to and didn’t try a hard sell if it was obvious we were not
a customer.
Someone at White Elephant has deep pockets and a wild
imagination. The creativity of one of the owners had been given free rein. The
resort advertises itself as a creative Art Center and it is. Most of the
buildings are art galleries with an assortment of permanent and temporary
exhibits. Every building, whether it was a gallery or one of the few rooms for
rent sported doorways, columns and wall treatments of architectural interest.
Lintels from India, friezes on the walls or furniture designed especially for
the rooms graced the buildings. Sculptures of animals, especially horses and
elephants, were scattered around the buildings and in decorative pools. Every
corner had something you wouldn’t expect to see.
After deciding we had
both had a bit too much sun, we took the shuttle to the beach resorts and walked
back to town. It took about 1 ½ hours, walking on the long stretches of hard
packed sand and picking our way around one rocky outcrop, to reach town. The
rocks led to a bay littered with beached fishing boats being repaired by their
owners. We passed the Vasco da Gama monument, a simple white washed pillar
topped by a cross. It was erected by the explorer during his visit to these
shores in the 16th century. The town jetty stood high and dry over the sand,
waiting for high tide when boats would be able to dock alongside. The sand from
the jetty onward glistened in the sun with golden flakes of mica. We exited the
beach through a beach resort and found ourselves just past the main shopping
area of town. We could have continued on past sand dunes all the way to Lamu,
but that will have to wait for another trip.
One
evening we joined Penny and Gordon and a young German couple, Christian and
Anita, for dinner at one of the best restaurants in town, The Old Man and the
Sea. We enjoyed delicious seafood lounging on a banquette of pillows set in a
Moorish style alcove. It was a treat.
A Marine Park, the first established in Kenya, lay just a short walk from
White Elephant resort. We arranged to go snorkelling on one of the many boats
anchored at the water’s edge. Christian and Anita shared our boat for several
hours of snorkelling in the clear waters not far from shore. The corals have
sustained extensive damage in the past but there was still plenty to interest
us. There were a few anemones with my favourite clown fish jealously guarding
their territory. I sighted a purple lipped giant clam in one rock crevasse that
closed up when I waved my fingers in it direction. Ray and I saw several
varieties of fish that were new to us plus lots of the familiar parrot fish and
sergeant majors.
We have checked out of our room and are sitting in the
shade by the pool at Mwembe, reading and writing this blog. All that remains of
our East African tour now is a short plane ride to Nairobi later this afternoon.
We have booked a Garden Safari Tent for two nights at Wildebeest Rest Camp in
the suburbs of Nairobi. We fly to Paris VERY early Wednesday morning.
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