Mombasa

Photo: Mombasa

// November 11th, 1996 // Kenya, Passage To Africa

Arriving in our last port we are greated by over a dozen enterprising salespeople selling their wares on the dock right beside the ship. This made souvenier shopping incredibly easy – and a lot of fun. Not only do you bargain here, you trade. Half of Mombasa must have pens, soap, shampoo, conditioner and anything else the passengers and crew thought Orient Lines wouldn’t miss from the Marco Polo! This is by far the best place to buy wood carvings 1/4 what they were asking in Djibouti.

Everyone went on a city tour here because we had an overnight on the ship before leaving on safari. It never seems to fail, one bus has to get stuck in a pothole somewhere along the way. The town is rundown looking, but people are very friendly.

The old fort still stands in Mombasa and is very interesting. The building walls contain an array of different colors, black, grey, cream, red, yellow, blue, and green. There were also beautiful views of the coast from the walls of the fort. Buildings from all different time periods in the fort’s history made exploration fascinating, and an exhibit showing the life of the fort in one of the newer buildings in the center tied them all together. Outside there are wonderful old streets to wander with interesting craft shops and a few little monkeys that are very adept at begging handouts from the tourists. The only thing I didn’t really like in Mombasa were the huge flying ant like bugs that come out at night – I hate bugs!


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