Day Two - Sandals That Cant Wait

I am up at five-thirty and when everybody else rises up, we draw an itinerary to fill our two weeks here at the coast. After breakfast, we swim for an hour and then set off to Fort Jesus on the island.

The weather is so agreeable that only the coconut and palm trees remind you that you are not upcountry. We pick a relative on our way to town. Fort Jesus is packed full of foreign and local tourists. At the gate we learn that it’s the National Museums of Kenya Day and everything is “on the house”. After a two-hour tour that only seems to interest Gregory, our guide takes us to old town and the old port on foot.

Georgina then throws our schedule into disarray by insisting that she must get a certain sandal. Two months ago while shopping for holiday gear, I had bought my Bata sandals as well as for Gregory and Natasha; but our Georgina could not get them in her favourite colours. So today we went to at least four shops in search of that elusive colour! She is not lucky in any of the shops. We break from the shoe hunt to have a lunch of pizza, chips, chicken and bottomless coke. It’s the hotel after that and we all head straight to the pool and for the first time the whole family is sharing in one pool. We frolic and share in water games. George even learns “advance” skills from me. We dash to the beach too, but the tide is coming in with too much force for comfort. After close to two hours, we are totally worn out. We snack after showers, and then drop our relative to her place, shop at Nakumatt Nyali before going for dinner. Dinner is agonizingly long for the kids due to fatigue.

The woes of dinner are soon forgotten, when we gather in the hotel yard for after-dinner entertainment by acrobatics, a magic show and a freak bike show. After the show the re-energized kids do not want to sleep any more- they want to play the various games and video machines enticingly placed all over the common areas of the hotel. Their mother discovers the massaging seat and at 150/= for ten minutes, I also get my daily dose of exercise just pulling out and back the wallet to keep the clan happy.

The hotel has a good mix of guests. There is a sprinkling of foreign tourists, locals a few mix marriage families, about 30 school kids from Lusaka, obvious honeymooning couples and the ubiquitous businessman.

We retire to bed well past eleven. Having missed out on the Haller Park visit today, tomorrow will be a tight day to squeeze in the visit.