Kipungani Explorer Lamu

The 30 min flight to Lamu was well worth while as it was very easy. Lamu is fascinating and all the locals are very charming and helpful. We had a worrying day re money as Lamu did not previously have a cashpoint and Barclays in Malindi, where we stopped to get enough cash to see us through, declined our custom. Fortunately, we still ...

... Chris is there...maybe our timing has improved. And sure enough he is the god of Lamu that we expect him to be... organizing our lives... making sure we make plans for some fun times. That afternoon we take a dhow over to Manda Island. This is a coral island and there are two things we are there to see. 1. The quarry..... bricks of coral are hand cut and this is then used to build houses on Lamu. 2. There is a ruins... there are ruins... how do you say that properly? Anyways... there ...

... that you can’t really do much on Lamu, and that’s fine! It was all so chilled and 'yeah, whatever, we’ll see what happens’; it was fantastic (though after 2 weeks I’d imagine it could get very frustrating). The ‘hakuna haraka’ (no rush) atmosphere of the island was very infectious. Needless to say that evening we went to bed early and slept well, even though I woke up and was a little disturbed at one point in the night ...

... Ora sara' circa mezz'ora che il tipo dell'internet point sta facendo non so cosa con il nostro biglietto per l'aereo di domani, ma ancora non e' riuscito a stamparlo... Non so perche' ma non sono mica cosi' sicura di riuscire a salire su quell'aereo!! Ah.. mi dicono che a circa una riga ogni 15 minuti la stampante qualcosa sta producendo. Beh. Comunque... qui si sta bene, il clima e' stupendo, la gente anche, male che vada... vi aspettiamo per pasqua??

... Having chilled chilled chilled for the last few weeks we are keen to get going with somthing a bit more active.... we are going to make our way back to Mombasa to start with and are not looking forward to the journey on the most pot holed road in Africa (it didnt help that we were alloated the worst seats ever on the way up, my bum definately left the seat at least a thousand times in the 5 hour journey....)

... aux allures de prés qu'un bon dériveur. Le truc, c'est que dans l'Archipel, il y a bien des hauts-fonds ce qui justifie une telle approche. Ce déséquilibre perpétuel est mis en balance par leurs marins qui dansent tels des funambules sur de grandes traverses longues de 5-7m et large de 20cm pour contrôler et maintenir une gîte compétitive. A dire vrai ils m'ont tant impressionné que une seule envie m'animée ensuite : faire de même ! Je peux vous assurer que ce n'est pas ...

... that snake the inside of the 'village'. For one of our days, we decided to take a 'dhow' trip to a closeby island called 'Manda Beach'. A dhow is basically a sailboat - sans la boom. The sail was setup and taken down with rope and these guys were damn good at navigating the wind. We took a trip over to the island, stopping for some fishing (line fishing by hand) along the way. Needless to say, the only Mzungu that caught a fish was my friend Lucas. The ...

... a more appropriate slogan would have been "you'll never walk again!" The first section of the journey was uneventful, unless you count the stop where burnt corn-on-the-cob and rotten meat skewers were shoved six feet up through my window and literally into my mouth. I bought some boiled eggs instead, having already had the pleasure of bush-meat-sickness and unpalatable tasteless rubbery corn. The floor ended up as usual - a medley of egg shells, corn cobs ...

... to do it again. The plan now is to hang here tomorrow and go sailing and fishing. After that we are heading to a small village where hopefully things wont be as crazy as they are here in teh center of town. After that we will come back to Lamu and have dinner at this guy's house named ali hippie, apparently he is in the lonely planet, I guess we'll find out what that is all about. After that we will hopefully fly back to Mombasa get some kick ass food ...

... Don got a real estate man all wound up asking questions, you can buy a one acre, 99 year lease hold, for about $180K, or how about 10 acres for $350K Any takers? The area is also known for the great calm channel and consistent wind for kite surfing and wind surfing and it was fun to watch. There is another culture element, the rasta scene, and some of the boats have flags with Bob Marly smoking dope on them. There is a beach boy scene and the good looking guys stalk the ...