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For Easter weekend, we decided to
drive up the coast to Malindi. It is a city about 1.5 hours up the coast of
Kenya that is somewhat known for being a place where old Mafia bosses move to
to escape persecution… AKA the Italian food in Malindi is supposed to be phenomenal!
The boys (Sid and Gaurav) were
supposed to go with us and actually drive us up to Malindi, but they had a long
night the night before (AKA drank like fishes and were hungover) and weren’t
responding to our texts well past the time when we had slated to leave. Groan!
Thank goodness the girls were equally willing to work around this matter and go
up to Malindi with or without the boys. So, we headed to the center of Mombasa
to catch a bus/shuttle up to Malindi.
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| Example of a matatu (white car with yellow stripe) |
Getting a bus apparently comes with
a bit of a learning curve because in retrospect we got totally hosed. We paid
waaayy too much (it didn’t seem like too much to us at the time) and bought
seats on a “shuttle” that wasn’t any different than a matatu (the public cars
that run throughout Kenya). We were cramped on 3 hour drive up to Malindi. It
took soooo long to get there because the matatu stopped every so often to drop
off and pick up more passengers. The music was good though, and Charley and I
sang out loud for at least an hour or so. It was a good learning experience,
and we had a blast. I think we really ended up paying extra simply for the
experience and a story that we will tell many times over and remember fondly.
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| Tuk-tuks |
Once in Malindi, we caught a tuk-tuk
to the hotel we had booked for the night, Ozi’s. Ozi’s was perfect and mad
props to Laurence, the hotel manager, who organized a great weekend on the spur
of the moment.
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| Charley, Caroline, and I with the Marafa Depression in the background |
That same evening, after grabbing a
quick bite for lunch, we took a taxi to the Marafa depression (AKA Hell’s
Kitchen). It was an hour worth of rough roads in a good car way, but most
definitely worth it. This is a natural sandstone gorge that had formed over
hundreds of years due to erosion. A member of a travel website that I am a
member of had suggested going for sunset, and I can say that we weren’t
disappointed at all by this advice. For one, the colors of the gorge seemed
intensified as the sun set, and then the temperature in the gorge itself during
the day soars into the 120’s. (Hence the name Hell’s Kitchen.) We went on a
walk around and through the gorge, and it was stunning. Highly recommended if
you are ever in Kenya.
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| More Marafa Depression |
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| Walking through the gorge |
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| Charley climbing up to a cool formation for a picture |
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| Sooo pretty! |
After we got back to the hotel, we had a quick
dinner of snacks because no one was all too hungry after having a late lunch
and went to bed because we had a long day planned for tomorrow.
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| Ozi's Hotel for the night - pretty nice actually |
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