Five star luxury (kinda)

So our next plan was to head to the coast and find a beach to relax for a week or so. We'd kinda made plans to try and meet up again with the Dutch Maaike's in Lamu, but weren't sure how we'd get there. All the info we had was that flights directly there were $150 each one-way, and I nearly booked tickets in a safari company place (Sarah wanted to book it there and then, but I had a niggly feeling about the guy, and just wasn't comfortable). So instead I decided to hold off and head to the Kenya Airways office to check details for flying to Uganda, which we planned on doing some time after we got back from the beach. While in the office what do I happen to spot but a promotional leaflet for direct flights to Lamu for only $50 each! Either this was a very new offer (nobody told us (even the guidebook) that this airline even flew to Lamu), or everyone was just trying to scam us into the more expensive options.

Anyway, I obviously jumped at the chance and booked flights straightaway. Man, was I happy that I'd listened to my intuition about the safari office guy - we'd just got flights for a third of the price.

So, the morning of our flight to Lamu turned out to be quite an eventful one. We had gotten up early (to burn photos onto CD) and were making our way down to the local bus stop for the bus to the airport (naturally, I'm no Epsilon Semi-Moron me). But traffic seemed very slow, and I couldn't find any sign of the bus. I asked a local guy and he said that yeah, we were in the right place but that there was some sort of trouble just down the road, as he pointed. We could see a biggish crowd gathering about 100 metres away and assumed it was a traffic accident or something. We also saw a truck full of army guys arriving just then too - but you see security guys all over Nairobi (and Kenya in general in fact), so I didn't think anything of it.

But it did seem obvious that the buses where going to be seriously messed up in this part of town, so I decided to walk past as much of the logjam as possible and then just flag down a dastardly taxi - I have my principles, but obviously there's a time and a place for everything.

On the way to the airport, the taxi guy tells us that the incident was actually a bomb, and it had gone off about 15 minutes before we arrived at the scene. Later it also transpired (although I think later this turned out to be false, not sure though), that the guys with the bomb had actually tried to board a number 34 bus, but that the bus was full and so they couldn't get on. They then walked over to a street hawker guy, handed him a briefcase, ran off and seconds later it exploded, killing the hawker guy (no-one else was killed or even seriously injured, so the police later called it a 'minor criminal incident'!). Guess where the number 34 bus goes - yep, that's right, the airport.

So anyway, having not gotten ourselves blown up, we arrived at the airport only to be told that our flight was cancelled due to technical problems with the plane. This didn't bother me in the slightest, as we're on a one-year trip so time is not a problem, and I knew that airlines had to take care of us in these situations. We did have to sit around though for a good while, as they tried to get us onto another flight with a different airline. We thought (since they thought) that they'd succeeded and we transferred to a different regional airport to pick up this different flight, only to be told half-an-hour after we arrive that in fact they couldn't take us at all.

So the airline put us up in a five-star hotel in downtown Nairobi, the Safari Club Hotel, while we attempted to catch the same flight the next day instead. I think this hotel used to be really nice, but it's a bit rundown and rough around the edges now, although all the rooms are actually two-room suites, and it had a nice swimming pool and stream room and sauna. Lunch, dinner and breakfast were also included of course, and these were actually fantastic - so all in all I had a ball for a whole day just lazing around, swimming, reading and eating.

The flight the next day went without a hitch, and was actually quite cool flying over the African plains, and flying over the turquoise waters around Lamu island was a beautiful sight. And so our beach time had started...