Mombasa to Nairobi

At the risk of conveying that all I ever do is go on vacation, I will report on my latest and last trip with Holly. We met up in Nairobi, Kenya this week- she from South Africa where she went for a conference and I from Uganda- and went to Mombasa on the Indian ocean. Mombasa, as a port city, has a long history of conflict between the Portuguese (remember hearing about Vasco de Gama in middle school?), Turks, and Omani Arabs- later the British and Swahili. It continues to be the conduit for oil for Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda; and the stopover for international navies protecting tankers from Somalian pirates to the north. The 'old city' was built by the Portuguese in the 1600's and is a maze of buildings with narrow alleyways. The community is mostly Muslim but very multicultural- including Masai, Swahili, Indian, and Arab. Our driver, whose ancestors were from Yemen, spoke Kiswahili, English, Arabic, and Urdu. We went to a fort built by the Portuguese in the late 1500's that gave a real sense of people living there. While walking through it, I wished for pictures of the soldiers so I could imagine them more clearly- and then we came upon drawings on a stone wall done by Portuguese soldiers (like doodling) of boats, animals, each other, and the Turkish soldiers. We went to the spice market and the owner scooped one after another spice for us to smell- completely intoxicating. After Mombasa, we spent 2 days on the beautiful beach to the south, then took an overnight train with sleeper cars (I've seen enough old movies to have always yearned for this experience) back to Nairobi. The train was built in the 1950's and has not been updated since-our cabin looked a bit like a kitchenette from that time- and was great. The hot, humid start gave way to cooler, dryer air as we left the coast. In the morning, after breakfast in the dining car (white table cloths!), we hung our heads out the window for hours. We passed small villages and saw hundreds of zebras, gnus, and impalas and a few giraffes. My favorite part was seeing ostriches running from the train. And Nairobi was great. Despite it's reputation as 'Nairobbery', it seemed energetic, clean, and organized. The pictures are from the fort wall, the spice market, and the train.