Mombasa and back

We spent most of last week in Mombasa - I was travelling there on work and dragged Robin and Tarana along as we all needed a short break. Robin spent three long days buying me a car and I spent all my time in meeting rooms. But our lazy evenings were great - we spent them in the hotel bar drinking Dawa after Dawa and listening to the sound of crashing waves.

Tarana had found paradise - the beach! It had two of her favorite things, sand and water. She couldn't believe that we had kept her away from a beach for so long and spent her first hour on the beach running from the sand to the sea and back. We had taken our nanny along who made the holiday so much easier.

Having had no time to discover Mombasa during the day we decided that the least we could do in a beach town is find some fresh sea food for dinner. Tamarind came highly recommended so that's where we went. It was a spectacular place. The architecture cloned a 14th century coastal fort with tall white walls, majestic arches and spacious verandas. We sat at a table overlooking the jetty where the two Tamarind Dhows were anchored. A live band played in the background while we looked across at the Old Town and enjoyed the sea breeze (and some mosquito bites!). We ate spicy crabs and prawns, and of course drank a few Dawas.

What made this trip an absolute success was the drive back. We stopped at a Forset Lodge (about 5kms off the main road) in Tsavo National Park for lunch. Sitting in the large veranda we absorbed nature - endless expanse of dry shrub forests, brown hills in the distance, a herd of elephants walking by, and a small lake where thousands of buffaloes had come to quench their thirst. A few warthogs marched in and out of sight. One of the people managing the lodge told us that lions had been spotted earlier in the day. It was almost 3 in the afternoon and we were not even half way to Nairobi. Though tempting, we just didn't have the time to go on a safari. We got into our car and had the same thought running through our heads - 'got to come back for the weekend'. On our way back to the highway, our driver said he thought he had spotted a beast. We reversed the car slowly, strained our eyes to look through the dry shrubs and guess what were we looking at? A lioness and her three cubs! A little further away stood a few zebras and one buffalo. We spent the next hour watching the lioness 'train' her cubs on how to hunt. It was magnificent. We had stopped at the Lodge hoping to get some food and see a few elephants. Spotting lions was a great extra.