Saturday 21 March 2015

Dau 9: My last full day in Mombasa!


 I woke up this morning and realized I’ve only got today and tomorrow left in Mombasa, so I want to make these days count! I’ve got to plan my time out and do all the things I’ve been planning to do that I haven’t done!


When I ventured onto the beach with Nicholus today, the clouds were blocking out the Sun and we didn't see the Sun til way after 7! That’s 30 minutes late! I wonder what tomorrow’s Sunrise will bring!



I wanted to try something new, I asked Nicholas to write the word ‘Kenya’ in the sand and experimented with some pictures. As you’ll remember from yesterday’s blog post Day 8, I tried climbing the palm tree but the pictures didn’t come out great.


I wanted to try again with a different palm tree, and see what pictures I could capture. I set up my camera and asked Nicholas to press the shutter. I started climbing but as I got a bit higher up I started slipping! I climbed back down.

The second time was a little bit better, but when I got half way I was starting to get vertigo, I took a few moments to relax and climbed back down. I didn't want fall or jump off because I didn't know what was lying underneath the sand.


After climbing down, Nicholas showed me the proper way to climb the palm tree, next he showed me how to split a coconut. He took a sharp metal post, probably from a fence and bashed the coconut against it, tearing the fibers of the fruit to reach the tasty fruit inside. I wanted to try to, It took him 5 minutes and about 20 minutes for me!


My parents came over and we went for walk down the beach, but when we got to the beach the tide was out! We saw captain Ali, when he came over, My Mum who wanted to try a pedal boat, asked him to sort something out for after my windsurfing lesson.

Before my lesson, we walked out towards the ocean. It started to hit us that this was our last full day in Mombasa. We saw a few crabs and some beautiful shellfish, then out of nowhere we saw a little yellow and black puffer fish; It was really cute, well for a puffer! It inflated and deflated, I started to chase it with my Mum's slippers hoping it would puff up again but it was a really fast swimmer, darting to hide behind my parents before swimming off.



We walked half way out and then all the way in to the shore and by that time the water had come in a bit more, I went up to Killian's office and we brought the windsurf board and sail and shoes down and got started. The wind was a little stronger than yesterday but I feeling prepared and confident that I could do it. I climbed on the board and took off, with the wind in my hair I headed up away from the shore; I must have rode the water for a good 20 minutes before a rogue wave blindsided me and knocked me off!

I hadn’t realized just how far I’d travelled until I tried to stand up in the water and it reached up to my neck! I clambered back onto the board and rode towards the shore, the wind was blowing me back out towards the ocean but luckily over the last few lessons I’ve managed to manipulate the wind into turning the board. I had to battle with the wind but eventually I was able to sail towards the shore.

Upon reaching the shore I had to walk the board all the way back to the starting point as the wind was blowing down the beach and I wanted to go in the opposite direction. I managed to do this a few more times, successfully turning so by the end of the lesson I was feeling really pleased with myself, that feeling was definitely worth all those hours of hard work and it was a great way to finish my series of windsurfing lessons! Maybe next time I will be able to pick it back up!


My parents decided to get the pedal boat half way through my lesson so after I finished with Killian, I climbed aboard and we went off with Moses, oh yeah I forgot to mention that before finishing I was coming in to the shore and my parents pedal boat and I crossed paths and I crashed into the boat! Luckily no one was hurt!

We took the boat down further to the end of the beach, it was really hard work, the seats on the boat were uncomfortable and there wasn't enough legroom but we managed it in the end! We climbed off the boat and kept walking down the beach, as far as we could go! When the tide is out you can walk all the way round to the sea caves, it'll probably take around 2-3 hours, but as the tide was in, that bit was cut off.

We turned back and started to walk back, all of a sudden a wall of hunger hit me! I hadn't eaten all day and had been up since 5:30 and had just done some heavy duty work so I needed food QUICK!! We raced back, it still took us like 45 minutes to walk back to the cottages, on the way we saw a really big puffer fish but it was dead, we decided to give it a quick burial.

Upon arrival at the cottages I was so hungry I had to have a madaf, I quickly slurped up all the water inside and ate the mali, (the creamy flesh on the inside!)
I devoured the samosas, chapattis and papaya, (in that order.) The samosas were really hot, even squirting lemon juice on them didn’t help. I only had one option. A jug of passion fruit juice to extinguish the inferno in my mouth!

After extinguishing the inferno, we all took a little cat nap. When we woke up we took a walk back along the beach and it hit home again that this time tomorrow we would be leaving the beautiful beaches of Mombasa. We have had such a wonderful holiday as we always do when we visit Kenya. I am going to miss the culture, the people but I think I will miss the food and being so close to the beach the most! I hope that we will return very soon!

After returning to the cottages, I started packing my bag, it made me reminisce about that day when we first arrived in Mombasa, 8 days ago. It also made me think about all of the new people I’d met and all of the new experiences I had and all the memories that I could share when I returned.

My uncle returned to the cottages and we headed of to one of the neighboring hotels for dinner, it was pretty late by the time we arrived and they had switched off all of their ovens except for one, the pizza oven! I know what you’re thinking, MIRACLE!

Now I have just finished packing my bag and just getting everything ready for tomorrow, we plan on waking up early tomorrow to utilize the time we have left in Mombasa.




Links to the rest of the holiday are below!
Day 1 || Day 2 || Day 3 || Day 4 || Day 5 || Day 6 || Day 7 || Day 8 || Day 9 || Day 10




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