Karibu Kwetu: WATAMU

WATAMU TRIP OCTOBER 2013

Blue Bay of Watamu - view from the Kikapu house

I have to consider that we were very lucky that our nice neighbor in Providence, Gray Horan, introduced me to a wonderful family here in Nairobi before we even arrived. The Cress family has been tremendously generous with their time and information on how to settle in Nairobi since we met them via email way back in May 2013. Thanks Doug and Sandra! We were lucky that Gray connected us....

So Sandra introduced me to another fabulous person, Belinda Biggs, whom I have never met personally but have skyped with a few times and we correspond now from time to time. The Biggs family were leaving Nairobi for the US this past summer and they had several items for sale, so Sandra told me that it would be a good idea to get in touch with them. So, we did. Now we have a nice car, washer/dryer, misc kitchen items, a full liquor cabinet and a fabulous housekeeper!!! And we have new friends in the US for when we return!

On one of Will's many trips to Nairobi this past summer, he had dinner with Belinda and her husband Geoff Biggs, who gave us some more great advice on Nairobi....but better than that, they recommended we try Watamu, Kenya for a vacation spot. Of course, we knew we wanted to head to the beach for the kids' one week October break....we all kind of felt that we cut our summer short when we departed for Nairobi in mid August. School starts in Kenya too early as far as we all are concerned.....

So, Belinda gave me the perfect contact information and from my beach house on Cape Cod in July, I booked our first beach vacation in Kenya! Watamu is on the north coast, a little south of Malindi and enough north of Mombasa. It is a sleepy, little, honky tonk beach town that has mostly European tourists, beautiful beaches and fabulous seafood.

Other inhabitants at Watamu include the "beach boys". They are a bit tricky to handle, but we realized they are more interested in the Italians than the Americans so that helped a bit. They want to make friends to "guide" you to certain places and they will happily take your money for "services". Whatever that means....What is interesting to me is that these guys speak about 5 different languages....they seem pretty smart and canny, and maybe they would find something better to do. They didn't bother us too much, but a few of them "guided" us into town one day, which ended quickly because we had a lunch date on the other side of town...I can't believe I didn't get a photo of any of them...

So, we were lucky to book this "Kikapu house", a cute but spacious 3 bedroom cottage right on the beach with a view of Blue Bay, which is around the corner from Turtle Bay, the main outlet to the Indian Ocean. It was a dream come true!

A few initial photos:

View of pool from cottage

View of cottage from pool

Path to private seating at beach

Path to beach from cottage

So, we really felt like we were in paradise. We had a great staff at the house, including a chef, house guy and pool boy. The only job we had was to relax! So, we were able to take some nice walks along the beach, we went snorkeling, we went swimming out to the big rocks that you can see in the top photo, and we did a few excursions into town. Lily and Will are working on their scuba diving licenses, so they did a bit of that as well.

We knew a few people that were also staying near us during the week off from school, so we had some folks to the house for sundowners....we are getting pretty good at making gin and tonics! That was a fun night Lindsey and Steve....I know we will have more....

We took a nice walk along the coast further north one day and we came across these really cool cliffs. A dude on the beach told us that they were made mostly of volcanic rock but were terribly damaged from the Tsunami that occurred in Phuket, Thailand a few years ago. That means that crazy waters travelled from Phuket, Thailand all the way across the Indian Ocean to create these cut outs in the rock on the ocean. That's wild....