Saturday, March 19th, 2005- Mombasa, Kenya

Today Aimee, along with her friends Darah and Sarah, and I went to the internet café for a couple of hours this morning. We then hit up the supermarket again. In the afternoon we went to the White Sands Hotel that was an extravagant hotel along the beach about 45 minutes away by matatu. As we passed the front gate we walked down the long tree lined driveway to the hotel where we ate lunch at the pizzeria overlooking the pool with the waterslide and some glimpses of the Indian Ocean. After lunch we went to go see about prices for jet skiing, snorkeling, kayaking, etc. but found the prices to be exorbitant. So instead we decided to walk down the beach a little bit but were soon bombarded by hawkers that were trying to sell their goods or the guys that were offering camel rides. We were first introduced to George, a gigantic camel, and I promised that if I decided to ride a camel that I would ride him. This would lead to a very angry Kenyan man later on.

We walked down the beach as this big Kenyan man tried to get Sarah to go dancing. She politely declined and he stuck to us like chewed gum on a finger. After we finally shook off the hawkers that were surrounding us on the beach me and Aimee went into the water… up to our knees. The water must have been in the high 80s and was filled with seaweed and touring boats among other stuff. Since it wasn’t really relaxing we headed back to the White Sands Hotel, with Aimee and Sarah taking a camel however not George. When we reached the White Sands Hotel George’s owner was going totally crazy on me screaming at me. I was like, “whoa buddy. Does it look like I’m on a camel?”

After talking to some guys about Jay-Z, 50 cent, and Tupac (these are rappers for any of you over the age of 30) we went to lay by the pool. Aimee and I actually went in for a while but were then approached by a pool boy asking if we had paid to go in the pool. When we said we hadn’t, he told us to give him 400 shillings each and he’d bring back a receipt. It smelled kind of fishy, and I don’t mean the smell from the beach, and I told him that we would pay at the front desk. As we were putting our clothes back on and debating on whether high tailing it he came back over and just told us to walk by and tell them that we hadn’t gone in the pool if someone asked.

We left the hotel and tried to pick up a matatu outside the gates but since we were in the middle of nowhere there was no stop, so we walked a good 10 minutes in the blazing sun. We picked up a matatu and headed to a different shopping center because Sarah was looking for a digital camera. On a side note, she was the second person that I was trying to help find a digital camera for. Kenya is not the place to try and buy digital cameras!