Beaches in the Moonlight and Swimming with Turtles

So I was right to ask for luck for the bus journey to Mombasa, as it was pretty hideous. We were in a big dark coach (there went my hopes of catching up on my journal on the bus as I'm two weeks behind) playing the same kiswahili song over and over and over again for the first hour and a half, it was absolutely boiling so the window had to be open the entire time, and there was nothing to rest your head on, so Rebecca and I just ended 'sleeping' on each others shoulders and on my hoodie pillow.

We arrived in Mombasa at 4.30am, after a lot of confusion on the bus with a man shouting 'MALINDI MALINDI MALINDI' at the top of his voice, which we wrongly interpreted as meaning we were in Malindi. However, when we heard him also say 'Welcome Mombasa' to another woman, we got slightly worried. It took about 10 questions to random Kenyans ('Are we in Mombasa?' 'No', 'Are we in Mombasa?' 'No', 'Are we in Mombasa' 'Yes') to establish that maybe we should be getting off, and so we stumbled out into the baking hot, dark, maybe-Mombasa street. After ringing our friends at a nearby hotel and consulting the map to discover that THANK GOD we were not stuck in Malindi at 4.30am, we ended up in their hotel room, sleeping on the very hard tiled floor to the sound of the nearby Mosque calling all Muslims to 5am prayers.

That morning Rebecca, Annie and I went to Fort Jesus, a historical fort-thingy next to the sea, which made some interesting photos with lots of turrets and dungeons to hide in, but wasn't amazing, and then we all went on the rather intrepid trip to South Mombasa, where we had a beach hut booked for that night. This involved a matatu ride, a ferry ride (SO different from normal ferries, more a kind of weird experiment of 'let's see if we can cram 10,000 people into one strange looking metal, industrial type boat', with George-Bush-insulting videos playing on large screens whilst we waited to get on), and another matatu ride with enormous rucksacks, but it was SO worth it when we arrived.

We had a big, proper house, with an actual bed per person, about 10 metres away from a secluded, white-sand-warm-blue-sea-and-skinny-palm-trees beach. It was amazing. We couldn't believe the view we looked out onto when we woke up.
We of course rushed straight into the sea, exploring some caves and finding some brightly-coloured crabs, before some people made a big trip to the supermarket then cooking spaghetti for tea (we had a kitchen!). That night we went down to the beach and did some paddling under the moonlight. It was so beautiful.

The next day, Easter Sunday, we awoke very early to catch a bus to go snorkelling and dolphin watching for an extortionate price. After about 2 hours on a wooden, old fashioned sailing boat on rather rough seas, feeling seasick and with no sign of a dolphin, we were feeling slightly worried about the amount of money we seemed to have wasted, but then came the snorkelling. We stopped by a shallow area with coral reefs, put on our masks and snorkels and spent about 3 hours swimming just above these fantastic coral reefs. It was like entire landscapes underwater, and there were so many fish. I never realised it was possible to gasp underwater until then. There were angel fish (so pretty), literally thousands of tiny black fish all swimming in one movement, rainbow, turquoise coloured fish, and we actually swam about half a metre away from a huge turtle. I could have touched it at points, and I just swam alongside it for ages marvelling at how amazing it was. To top the day off, we did see a dolphin once we were back on the boat, and had a really good vegetable-curry lunch on board the boat.

That evening was very funny; we spent the first half crashed out on the beds, wishing we could just sleep, then suddenly found some energy and ended up sat on the beach, playing a hilarious game of truth or dare, until 3am. There were tons of stars and the moon reflecting off the water, and the waves just splashing in against the shore. Unfortunately we also had the idea of running into the sea at about 2am, and, being the ridiculously clumsy and uncoordinated person I am, I went running into the sea at the speed of light and smacked my shin straight into an underwater rock, it being low tide. This hurt rather a lot and I had to go back up to the house to bandage it up before spending about an hour alternating between panicking that we'd buried our room key on the beach (it turned up in the keyhole of the house, stupid us) and talking to Amy. We ate CREME EGGS that Amy's friend had brought over from England at 3.30am :)

Yesterday we spent on the beach, reading and attempting to tan (all this achieved is that I now have a bandage-shaped tan line on my leg), Rebecca fell in love with a shell and sat all day in the ocean cleaning it and is now lobster red, and we ate lots of good food at the restaurant in the beach hut complex, and lots and lots of noodles cooked in our kitchen.

In the evening, six of us travelled to another beach, slightly south of the previous one, where we're now staying in a surprisingly nice (for the money) hotel, inhabited by a tiny tabby kitten, a matatu ride from the beach.

Today was spent on the beach (rather more seaweedy than the last one, and with lots more beach boys trying to sell you hats or rather more dubious goods, or alternately trying to pay you for rather more dubious goods), riding a camel named Tristan (brightly decorated with flowers and patterns for Easter), sunbathing on the dampish sand, and eating pizza by the sand. Sadly I am a bit afraid to swim because of my leg, which hurts quite a bit, but we are planning to do some watersports soon and go on a giant yellow banana boat, so hopefully it will be better for that :)