great escape to kenya

The past couple of weeks have been really hard so my friend Stephanie and I decided to reward ourselves with a couple day getaway to he beautiful coastal town of Mombasa, Kenya. On Wednesday morning we left Arusha on a big yellow bus and drove about 9 hours into another world! (Oh, on the bus ride there I saw an elephant just hanging out near the road.)

When we got to Mombasa, we took a taxi to the northern tip of the island called Nyali which is the really nice section. Our hostel was there so we hung out there

for a couple of hours, eating dinner and hanging around this really reallynice shopping center. The hostel was in a huge mansion but it was really creepy and hot so the night was actually not that good.

On Thursday morning we got up and went to the beach! We went to this five star hotel named The Reef and hung out in the beautiful pool that overlooked the gorgeous Indian Ocean. We swam all morning, hung out at the swim up bar, and ate a light lunchat theoutdoor restaurant. In the early afternoon when the clouds were coming in, we left the pool and we to Haller Park which is a nature reserve within walkingdistance to Nyali District. The beautiful Reef

Hotel.

It turned out that we got to Haller Park right at feeding time for the animals. For just 800

Kenyan Shillings ($10) we gotour ownprivate tour of the entire park, fed giraffes by hand, and got to see the hippos and the crocodiles being fed. Haller Park was definitely a really fun experience.

After going to Haller Park, we went back to our hostel to pick up our bags and headed to the place we were staying for that night. We did not know that it was so far away but we realized this after about 2 hours of traveling by 3 different matatus (Kenya version of the dala-dala), a ferry across the channel, and a taxi. (A taxi from Nyali to the south coast where we were heading was going to be about $50 so we decided to rough it). We finally got to Stilts, the tree house hotel at about 8:30, ate dinner, and got into bed. Me feeding a giraffe!

!

I was awoken on Friday morning in my little tree house by Stephanie telling me to look at two monkeys staring in at us through the cracks big enough for them to move through. That morning, I put my toothbrush, toothpaste, and inhaler on the table on our little porch and one of the monkeys swooped down and stole my inhaler!!

We spent the morning and early afternoon at the beach again this time at 40 Thieves, a really cool restaurant with a free beach. We ate some amazing food and rested on the couches right on

the beach. The water was as warm as a bath! It was amazing!

Our Treehouse at Stilts

In the later afternoon, we headed back to the north beach via matatu, ferry, and this time a tuktuk which is an auto rickshaw! We checked into this other hotel in Nyali for Friday night that seemed really nice but there were bugs in the beds :(. We got up early on Saturday morning and caught the bus back to Arusha.

The couple days away were so relaxing and now I'm re-energized to do my massive amounts of work. Its really strange to thinking about how 1 week from tomorrow I will be boarding a plane to Europe.