Back in Germany....

How quickly time flies. I have been back in Germany since Friday, but of course I don't want to withhold my experiences of the last two weeks from you.

On 03.07 I should have gone from Nairobi to Mombasa or Diani Beach. I had already booked my flight for this route from Germany in advance, as I did not know that there is now a cheap and fast train for this connection. But well, flying is easier with all my luggage. I thought so until then. The evening before, I checked the internet again to see if the flight time had remained the same and the next morning I was picked up on time by my organization at my host family's and driven to the airport. Everything worked out fine. When I arrived at the airport, I first noticed that the terminal indicated on the internet was wrong. Still not a problem, just take the shuttle to the other terminal. There I found my flight directly on the screens: as scheduled. So off to the check-in counter, check-in. There I was informed that my flight was cancelled. Was that surprising? Not really. After 8 weeks in Kenya, you are actually prepared for everything and nothing could shock me at that moment. The only thing that I found very confusing was that it still said "as scheduled" on the internet and on the screens. But well. Fortunately, I was able to rebook to the next flight at 13:00 (my original flight was at 9:30). So no big deal. It only takes 45 minutes to fly from Nairobi to Mombasa and Marius was only arriving the next day anyway. When I finally checked in, unfortunately the very friendly airport staff sent me in the wrong direction, so I ended up at the international departures afterwards. Great. Asked again: "no, you are in the wrong place, you have to go out again". Thanks for nothing. Good thing my visa was already stamped because the nice employee didn't even pay attention to where I was actually flying to. You only had one job!!!! But pole pole ("slowly, slowly", the favorite motto of every Kenyan right after "Hakuna Matata") So I simply crossed out the stamp. When I finally arrived at the right gate, everything went more or less according to plan (apart from the delay of the flight). Finally arrived in Mombasa and had a private transfer to the hotel "Diani Beach Hotel". Great hotel, I must say! I quickly jumped into the pool and tried the buffet in the evening. And the next day Marius finally arrived J We spent a relaxed day at the beach and tried the shisha bar on the beach after lunch, which I had already discovered during my last visit to Diani. I think Marius liked it too and at the end of the two weeks of vacation, we were almost considered regular customers there.

The next day we went on a snorkeling tour that we had booked through Tui. I thought you can't go wrong with snorkeling tours. But you can. We also had some bad luck with the weather, as it had rained in the morning and then was cloudy all day, but in terms of organization, the snorkeling tour was an absolute cheek. We had to get into a nutshell boat with 20 people. Just like the refugees were squeezed into the boat, we were driven to our "dhow". This boat was a bit bigger, but quite rocky in the waves. We were told that it would take about an hour to drive to the reef. After 2 hours, we finally arrived at the reef. Kenyans are not very good at estimating time. So we were simply "thrown out" in the middle of the open sea with quite heavy waves and then the boat just drove away. Only to pick us up on the other side, but I still found it irresponsible because we couldn't just swim back to the boat. For example, if someone had panicked, they would not have been able to get back on the boat quickly. One of the crew members did come into the water with us, but he was not much help. When I go snorkeling, I like to float in the water and watch fish and other marine creatures. But this guy thought that everyone had to swim behind him. Then he set a pace that made it impossible for me to observe the underwater world in peace, I couldn't keep up at all, and eventually I was drifting alone in the open sea. For such a tour, you should actually get paid. But I managed to get back to the boat, but most people didn't feel like doing a second snorkeling trip afterwards. So we went to have lunch on an island. No one told us that we had to walk 15 minutes from the pier (which we could only reach again with the refugee boat). I mean, I don't mind walking... But there was no paved path and we had to walk on pretty sharp rocks... In flip-flops. Because no one told us that we needed sturdy shoes. The lunch was okay, but not enough for everyone. When we finally returned to the starting pier, there were already 5 local vendors waiting there, wanting to sell us water and snacks. Very useful after just having eaten. But they didn't let us off. The whites have so much money, so we can support them. We just wanted to get back to the hotel as quickly as possible. However, our driver had other plans. There was a slave cave in the area that we could visit. But of course it cost extra. It's not like we already paid 120€ for this sh**ty tour. Marius and I didn't look at the cave out of principle. At least we were back at the hotel on time for dinner. That was also important, because we probably wouldn't have survived the evening after lunch on the island. Well, we crossed off this terrible tour (at least we saw some larger fish and a sea turtle..) and hoped that the safari, which was scheduled for the weekend, would be better. And what can I say? The safari exceeded all my (and I think Marius') expectations. We had already booked the safari in advance (luckily not with Tui but with Marcopolosafaris. Highly recommended!) 2 days in Tsavo East with overnight stay at Sentrim Tsavo Camp. The camp was really great. Luxury tents with ensuite bathroom and shower. Right next to the camp was a watering hole where there were always animals and even elephants. I could have watched the animals at the watering hole for hours. We could even watch the animals during dinner. We sat about 200 meters away from the elephants. A dream! And the safari was absolutely amazing! Marius saw everything that Tsavo has to offer. Apart from the hyenas, he unfortunately didn't see them. But instead: giraffes, plenty of elephants including calves, buffalo, various species of antelopes, gazelles, zebras, waterbucks, baboons, lions including cubs, ostriches, cheetahs... and I'm sure I forgot something in my list. But the absolute highlight was that the next morning we saw two playing leopards. That was really amazing and I hadn't seen that during the 8 weeks at KWS. I had already seen a leopard, but it immediately hid in the next bush. It is very difficult to observe leopards in the wild, as they are very shy and can usually only be seen very early in the morning. So we were very lucky. We waited there for at least 15 minutes to watch the leopards play. Marius was also very excited and even our driver was absolutely thrilled. He said he had never seen anything so beautiful in Tsavo. This safari was more than worth it and made up for the failed snorkeling tour.

Monday was again a pure beach and chill day. You have to recover from such a safari for a day and let the experiences sink in. For the next day we had booked another tour with Tui (unfortunately we had booked the two tours together, otherwise we probably wouldn't have booked with Tui again after the snorkeling tour..) We were going to Shimba Hills. We didn't have high expectations from the start, as there are not many species of animals in Shimba Hills and the woman from Tui said that the snorkeling tour was the best tour they had to offer.. So we didn't have high hopes for this tour. But what can I say? It was alright. We even saw some animals including the rare sable antelope. I still needed that! But the driver was a bit annoying. He stopped 5 times for every bird and every monkey so that the even more annoying Polish family could take 120963019827309172049371 photos of the same monkey... There was a nice waterfall in the park where we were even allowed to "shower". We had lunch at a lodge with a great view and an absolutely dream pool!!! The lunch was also quite good, but the pool really topped everything. Just for that, the trip was already worth it. We had the pool (and the jacuzzi!!) all to ourselves, because the Polish family wanted to drive around the park to take another 9872350974029734 photos of another monkey.

We spent the remaining days on the beach and at the shisha bar. The vacation was really wonderful and rounded off my stay in Kenya perfectly. But now I'm also looking forward to being back in Germany and especially to going to Münster again next weekend to finally see my family again!

Thank you very much to my loyal readers! Sending you warm hugs,

your Pia

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