Day 32 and 33 Mombasa to Pangani & Mkoma Bay, Pangani

Day 32

We get away from the Kenya Bay Beach Hotel before 08h00am, but that is where the timeous start ends, it takes us one and a half hours to get to the new Nyali Bridge a distance of not more than 10kms the strange thing is, when you reach the bridge you cannot fathom why there was a hold up.

We are getting the feel for Mombasa by now and we find our way to Likoni Ferry in quick time, my impression of Mombasa Island today is one of a city bursting at the seems, very dirty, but vibrant with a lot of entrepreneurship evident in the street side businesses. Clearly since I lived there in the 60’s it has expanded in all directions particularly up the North Coast towards Bamburi. One thing that has not changed is the heat coupled with the humidity, we are lucky this is the cooler time of the year!!

I forgot to tell you that the Mombasa Club is still up and running and clearly from what our guide told us about three times is still seen as the last outpost of the British Colonial Regime.

The ferry crossing was a breeze and the road is pretty good down past Diani Beach and other landmarks I had forgotten about like the large sisal estates in this part of the country. We arrive at the border post at Horohoro which is a comparatively quiet crossing; either that or we are getting the hang of it. You first clear customs then 6kms down the road you clear immigration, wish they were all like this.

The road to Tanga is great and as a result I pick up the first speeding fine of the trip Tz Shs 30,000 (R150) doing 75kmph in a 50kmph zone at the end of the village I overtook a bus and they zapped me, not before they indicated that “kitu kidogo” meaning a small thing and also a bribe in fact his words were “what can you do for me”

We are all too aware that the condition of the road from Tanga to Pangani is an unknown so we push through without delay having been told it would take 2 hours. It was not a great road, but we managed to do it in an hour for 45kms.

Once again the access road to the Mkoma Bay Tented Lodge leads one to think what have we booked in to, only to be pleasantly surprised and we managed to get Claudia and Sinead their own tent at no extra cost, the food is good and the beach fantastic very long and deserted. I must say I was very glad we took the coastal road as my GPS coordinates would have taken us south of the Pangani River and we would have to come north again over the Pangani River on a small ferry and probably would have taken us an extra 2 hours.

Day 33

This is our rest day and we decide that chilling is ideal in this perfect setting so we catch a few rays, lounge about, have fish and chips for lunch, a swim in the sea and relax. Talking of the sea Sinead is petrified of the sea, and does not want to anywhere near the waves, that are very small along this coast as there is a reef, but you can only imagine what it looks like to a small child, my guess is that it is overpowering.

The food here is good and I am sure we have all put on a couple of kilo’s. We are off to Dar es Salaam tomorrow so we get to bed reasonably early as we want to make an early start.