Day 501 - A Beach Is A Beach

After a relaxing breakfast it was time to venture into town to do a little shopping. It was a rather successful trip. My friend from Juba (who so kindly decided to come to Mombasa to join me for a few days) and I made our way to the public beach, driven but our newfound extremely reliable and trustworthy boda boda driver.  Safely sandwiched on the boda, we started our trek down the road, through Mtwapa and past all of the resorts, where I know all the people staying at those places are missing the real experience of Mombasa. To my surprise the public beach was amazing. Aside from the usual vendors trying to sell you stuff, get you to go for a ride on their boat, or ride their stinky, very sad looking camel, the beach was beautiful. When the tide is out there is a very long beach, sans rocks and seaweed, so you can walk for a really long time and swim in deep water without any seaweed under you. My kind of perfect ocean swimming. We did make it to a point where there was seaweed. I waded/floated/swam in the water for a good hour or so without putting my feet down; I was terrified of the seaweed and sea urchins. But I finally had a proper swim in the ocean. 

I had had enough of the water before the rest of the friends I was with so I made my way to the beach and relaxed at a restaurant called Pirates until the rest joined me. We spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing, watching the tide come in and the stars come out.

We were sitting right on the beach so there were people walking back and forth trying to get us to buy what they were selling. There was this one guy in particular that wanted us to go out on his boat. We had no interest and told him just that, however he continued to stand there and just stare at us. I had had enough of it and asked him if he could keeping walking and not stare at us. He was obviously offended by this as though it was a perfectly respectable thing for him to stand three feet from us and just stare. He eventually walked away and came walking past again chanting, “A beach is a beach. A beach is a beach. A beach is a beach.” It was quite entertaining. 

Moral of the story: A beach is a beach however staring is rude.