Galu

A couple of days ago, I left Mombasa to go to the southeast coast of Kenya. 🇰🇪 The hostel put me in contact with the driver Cosmus who would drive me all the way to my next destination - the Diani Hostel in Diani Beach. 🏝️ The 2 hour ride cost me 4500 KES (approximately 30 EUR) but therefore I didn’t have to deal with any of the hurdles on the way (changing from tuktuk to Matatu, taking the ferry that connects Mombasa oldtown with Likoni in the south, etc.). 😌 Actually I wanted to write my blog post about Mombasa during the drive to Diani Beach but Cosmus simply was the nicest Uber driver that I had in Kenya so far. We talked about many things and the time until we arrived at my hostel just flew by. 😅
My hostel was very basic but also very cheap (5 EUR a night). I booked it only for two nights and later switched to another place. Being too far away from the beach and the main road, the hostel was simply a bit too quiet. 🤫I have been only one of 3 guests during the time and I was the only one staying in the 8-bed dorm.
The climate in Diani Beach was very hot and humid - so not very different from Mombasa and other places on the east coast. 😰If you are lucky you find a fan that makes the heat somewhat bearable. My hostel didn’t have a fan and so I had to rely on one or the other breeze 🌬️Unfortunately, I was also not careful enough about keeping moskitos 🦟 away from my bed in the first night which resulted in many itchy mosquito bites. So, probably I slept only a couple of hours that night. 😴
Anyways - coincidentally, it turned out that Kaili and Wim (from Belgium) which I already knew from Naivasha where also in Diani Beach. They planned to go diving on the next day and I quickly arranged with the dive instructor via WhatsApp that I would join them on the next day. 😃

The next morning I woke up early to met the others at 8 am at the dive center at Galu beach. It was an hour walk 🚶 away from my hostel but I did not mind since it was early in the day and not yet so hot. Kaili and Wim had thoroughly selected Scuba Duka as our dive center. The dive instructors were very professional and the gear was of good quality as well. 👍We went on a boat to two different relatively easy dive sites: Milele and Galu Reef. Both were only 14-15 meters deep and with none to mild currents.
Nevertheless, it was superwindy that day and there were a lot of waves 🌊 So, taking the boat was a bit challenging for our stomachs. 🤢😄 In the water, the visibility was not great (< 8 meters) but good enough to marvel at the abundant coral 🪸 and nearby fish 🐠 as well as the many big turtles 🐢 that we found at the bottom of the ocean. During both of our dives we spent approximately 50 min. underwater. We returned to Galu beach in the early afternoon and spent a little bit of time at the very cozy Soul Breeze Beach Club 🍻Then we went for lunch to Kaili‘s and Wim‘s place - Kaili cooked some very yummy vegetarian pasta - and chilled on their terrace. At 6 pm I took a boda boda (a taxi service but with motorbike) 🏍️ back to my hostel and spent the evening with watching YouTube videos. 🙄

On the next day I moved 🧳 to another place - called „Rahani Beachfront Studio Apartments“. I booked it through Booking.com but the place was very hard to find: in Google Maps sends you to a place that is quite far away from the actual location. 😡And when you drive to the location shown by Booking.com, then there is nothing called „Rahani Beachfront Studio Apartments“. It turned out that the place has been a hotel called „Golden Sun Resort“ in the past but now is repurposed as airbnb apartments. 🤯 We had to call the phone number of the place in Booking.com, to finally get the right directions. Poor tuktuk driver that had to drive me around for almost an hour or so. I gave him a tip to make up for the inconvenience.😎
My apartment was pretty nice though. I had my own bathroom and shower, a kitchen with a fridge and other appliances, a living room and my own bedroom. So, it was a bit of luxury in between the many hostels I had stayed in in the past. 😛
Of course, I had to visit the beach & the pool in the afternoon once I had checked in. It was still quite windy - good for the kite surfers but suboptimal for me who just wanted to enjoy the beach and the sun. 😩 During my walk at the beach I met Salim. He was very friendly and talkative. Obviously he wanted me to buy a coconut 🥥 from him but he didn’t ask me to buy one. After 10 minutes of conversation I asked him how much one of them would cost - we agreed on 300 KES (2 EUR). He opened it for me directly at the beach with a small machete 🔪 and kept talking about Diani Beach and it’s advantages. After 30 min. I ended the conversation and went back to the pool 🏊
Although on the beachfront, the apartment was also far away from central cafes, bars and restaurants. After dark, when it was a bit cooler, I walked 🚶 for 30 minutes to the Carefore (which is basically in the city centre) for some grocery shopping and back again.
One thing I did not like about Diani Beach in general is that it is very streched out along the main road 🛣️ so that you always have to either walk long distances or take a car, a tuktuk or a boda boda when you want to go somewhere. Other than that, the locals in Diani Beach have been all quite friendly and very helpful to me. It is the place in Kenya where I felt the safest so far. 😎

On my last full day in Diani Beach, I went together with Kaili and Wim on a snorkeling 🤿 and dolphin 🐬 watching trip at Wasini island and the Kisite-Mpunguti Marine National Park. During the drive to our destination, we almost had an accident with a truck. 😱 It was close but luckily nothing happened. 30 min after that shocker we arrived at the jetty at about 10 am in the morning - it was still low tide. At the jetty we changed from the mini bus to a dhow (a traditional arabic boat as seen often in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean)⛵️
It was cloudy the whole day and when we arrived at the snorkeling spot, it rained heavily for approximately 15 min. That didn’t discourage us and we went into the water anyways. 🤷 We were surprised by the very good visibility (probably > 25 meters) as well as the many colorful fish and coral. 🪸 After snorkeling for a while, we also spent a little bit of time on a sandbank that - due to the high tide - disappeared shortly after. Then we tried to find some dolphins but were not successful. Instead we went for a late lunch lunch - fish 🐟 and seafood 🦞 as well as coconut rice 🍚 and chapati 🫓 It was really good considering that we payed for our whole day trip only 5500 KES (approximately 37 EUR) and the entrance to the national park was as already 4500 KES. 😊
Although it was cloudy the whole time everyone of us got sunburned. The sun ☀️ is really strong on Kenya’s east coast and the clouds were misleading us. We all have to apply now heaps of aloe vera to ease the pain 😅
At approximately 5.30 pm we were back at Kaili‘s and Wim‘s place and hung out for a bit.
For dinner we went to the Salty Squid. They had really good cocktails 🍸 and food 🥘 there. It was a suitable location for our farewell. 😌
Kaili and Wim will stay for 10 more days in Diani Beach while I will travel further north in Kenya - my next stop is Lamu. That’s a more traditional and not so touristy place with some arabic culture but also some beaches nearby that has been recommended to me from many Kenyans. I am curious what awaits me there 👀Baca lagi