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PLAYING TOURIST IN MOMBASA

As you remember, we arrived in HISTORIC MOMBASA by TRAIN FROM NAIROBI, disembarking about 9:00 a.m. This is East Africa’s busiest port
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an ancient town built on an island that has been significant for for over 400 yearsSIGNIFICANT FOR OVER 400 YEARS, and counting. You can follow our adventures on THIS MAP FROM GOOGLE
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After collecting our luggage (thankful, as always, for wheeled bags) we headed up Haile Selassie Blvd, the main street of town.
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Within a couple of blocks, we came to a Hindu temple
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As we approached, the incredibly decorated front doors came into clear view
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and we were met and welcomed inside by a delightful young man who proceeded to conduct us on a very nice tour of the facility. The outer precinct was lined with a fascinating set of paintings depicting various aspects of the members’ religious beliefs
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Inside, the main altar was even more impressive, with its decorations and offerings of food and flowers
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Back on the street, the typical contrasts of any developing country were clearly visible
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while the side streets varied radically
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Gail had done some research in the tour book we had brought, and she had a number of hotels to check out. The first was on a side street, and the lobby was promising
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so I watched the bags while Gail went upstairs
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to check out a room. Not so good….and, in fact, the neighborhood was a little spooky, as well. We returned to Haile Selassie Blvd, the main street of KENYA’S SECOND CITY. (Warning: you will not find our hotel on this, or any other site of which I’m aware……) to look for the Excellent Hotel B&B – and there it was!
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It was well-signed and offered a lot of extras
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We made the arrangements, paid our US$20.00/night, and headed upstairs, past the announcements
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and down the hall
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Opening the door, we could see our room
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with the door to our own bathroom
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The bathroom itself was basic
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but a good deal more “luxurious” than many places we’ve stayed in our travels. And the balcony
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was wonderful, with tall trees to shade it, and views both up and down Haile Selassie Blvd
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Standing out here to view the passing scene was an endless temptation whenever we were at the hotel, since so much fascinating stuff was always going on
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Back inside, we arranged the beds, and set up the mosquito nets
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which were one of the requirements when Gail was searching for a suitable hotel. Despite the malaria pills we took each morning, neither of us cared to risk a bite from the “wrong” individual. Once we’d settled ourselves, we went back downstairs to find lunch. A vegetarian Indian restaurant was described in our Mombasa guide to be both good and cheap, although they warned that many reported the food to be excessively hot (spicy) for most palates. Happily, the NEW CHETNA was just across the street and up a block or two from our Excellent Hotel….
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The entrance wasn’t terribly prepossessing
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but the buffet was generous
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and the food was absolutely wonderful - NOT too spicy at all…I’m not sure whether they’ve changed their seasonings in response to tourist complaints, or if the people reporting were simply really culinary wimps!
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So, the New Chetna was #1 in our book, both for the food and for the prices - so much that we went back the next day, too. We didn’t see anyone who looked the least bit touristy, either – just local businessmen and a few guys that reminded us (maybe) of what in this country would be mafia-types…do they have those in Kenya?

Finally, the New Chetna sold the very best PLATANO (plaintain, or cooking banana) chips we had while in Kenya, and the price was right. We bought these chips as often as possible, because we learned to love them in South America and they’re not widely available at home. (I’ve just learned you can make your own, though….BAKED or more traditionally FRIED
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Of course, TRADER JOE’S carries a good variety, but although they’re less work to procure, they’re relatively expensive…so we don’t have them often. In Kenya, we actually paid MORE from a street vendor who was making them in front of us on his cart. He assured us he was charging the “local price” rather than a “tourist special”, plus watching him make them was a treat. We paid him only slightly more than the ones we got at the New Chetna….buying on the street is the purest form of capitalism - we do it as often as possible, but not every purchase is a “win” for the buyer.
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Perhaps the number one tourist attraction in Mombasa is FORT JESUS, which was made in the SHAPE OF A MAN (sort of)
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by the Portuguese, who were interested in protecting their trade in slaves, ivory, and other good when they BEGAN CONSTRUCTION IN 1593. If you visit Mombasa, consider attending the SOUND AND LIGHT SHOW WITH DINNER at the Fort, which must be delightful….but was considerably outside our budget this time around.

The fort defended the harbor entrance and the Old City of Mombasa, as seen here:
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The shape is only vaguely humanoid to me…but you can see where the idea came from. As we approached the entrance, we passed a small park with TWO 4-INCH NAVAL GUNS
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placed here by the British after World War I. Pegasus was an elderly British warship sunk in Zanzibar harbor by the Germans. KOENIGSBURG was the German cruiser that sank Pegasus, so it’s somewhat ironic that guns from these two ships are now displayed side by side.
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Out in front of the Fort entrance, you will be met by a bevy of gentlemen (I saw no one from the distaff side doing this job – the coast is far more Muslim than the interior) who wish to guide you through the fort. Engaging one of these guides is a very good idea, as you will get far more out of your time than if you try it by yourself. The man we engaged named a price, and when we hesitated, he informed us that he would guide us for nothing – that we should give him only what we felt the tour was worth when we were finished….Gail warned him that she wanted to see EVERYTHING, and that we would stay all day if that’s how long it took, but he was game and said that it was fine with him…he enjoyed showing people the history of his country, and he would trust us to do what was right. We thoroughly enjoyed the time we spent with this delightful man
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who told us many fascinating details about the Fort, as well as about coastal Kenya and its history, about his family, the island where he lives, and even some local politics. I was happy to give him more than the price he’d named at the beginning, and not simply because he was such a good photographer
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– he had become a friend.
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The Fort is built on a ridge of coral exposed when sea levels dropped at some point, and you can see how it controls the entrances to the harbor
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The walls on this side are truly massive
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originally constructed of coral block, and both strengthened and raised over the centuries. Were you to have arrived at the Fort by sea, this would have been the approach
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On the other hand, if you were a “friendly”, you’d have come directly into the Fort and up this passage
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where we got the clearest look at the coral that forms the basic material of the walls
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The battlements and turrets are still impressive
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and the views are wonderful. Of course, the sentry peering out from the corner observation post might have had a different feeling than we did as he checked for foreign ships
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and this was the preferred view for the Fort’s defenders…...
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I doubt that the original fort had such windows as this one
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which probably dates from the British use of the Fort as a prison. Looking over the wall on the landward side, we can see the enormous amount of work that was undertaken during the time the Fort served a military purpose
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Because the construction was done on the seaward side of the coral ridge, the landward side was higher, and the walls were therefore effectively lower…..so the offending coral was dug out and used in the construction. The “ditch” that raised the relative height of these walls intended to be 30 meters wide, but as you can see, in some places it’s as little as 3 meters, or about 10 feet.

In the center of Fort Jesus is a parade ground, and it was generally crowded with people on various tours
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including many Kenyan school-children and other students learning the history of this area. At one point, a drenching rainstorm cleared the open areas, sending us and everyone else under cover
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We spent much of the rainstorm in the Fort’s museum, whose displays included a diorama illustrating underwater archaeology
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of which there is plenty of opportunity along this coast, given the combination of a long history of trading ships and the abundance of shoals in its water. We also saw pottery from a variety of sources in various time periods
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and spectacular ceramics, of which this is only the barest sample
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– Mom will recognize the shape of these vases…… Down the middle of the display area was an exhibit of model ships, built by a variety of artists, and representing the different time-periods and ship-building traditions of the Kenyan coast. I could have spent an hour just on these models! However, I think the most remarkable exhibit we saw was as we were leaving through an old room where replacement sentries used to wait their turn on the walls. Apparently it was boring duty, and at least some of these guys spent their time drawing on the walls….
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The powers-that-be didn’t value these graffiti, and they were covered up by layers of new plaster and paint over the years, and might have been lost altogether had someone not noticed a piece of one when a chunk of plaster fell off the wall…..a process of rediscovery, restoration and conservation followed, leaving us with pictures of life, people, and artifacts of a time beyond the memories of anyone now living.
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Outside again, we passed an original (well…..really old, anyhow) door
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and looking back across the complexity of walls, rooms, stairways, and other construction
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reflected on the amazing history of this small corner of Africa…..we will NEVER know all of what occurred here, but seeing it “in the flesh”, hearing what is known, and speculating on what else might have been is what makes travel almost anywhere in this world so endlessly fascinating. We could happily spend a couple of weeks in Mombasa, although (sadly) I don’t imagine we’ll ever get the chance to do that.

If you remember that the Hotel Excellent was also a B&B, you might wonder what a free Mombasa breakfast was like – we did, too as a matter of fact. The next morning we headed downstairs and asked at the desk, where they gave us a ticket and told us to go next door to the restaurant
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where we were greeted by a menu and announcement board….notice that you can have “goat arm” or “goat ribs”, also Tilapia (a white fish), beef, chicken and other undecipherable things. The exchange rate was about 75 Kenya shillings (Ks) to one dollar, so the Stir-fried Chicken/Beef would set you back about US$2.00. a “Whole Goat Arm” was 490 Ks, or almost US$7.00, but I suspect it came with rice and other things and would feed at least two people. Spaghetti a al Bolognese was 100 Ks, a little more than a dollar and a quarter. Food wasn’t terribly expensive – at least for us. We sat down at the table, gave the waitress our ticket and were served in three courses at short intervals. First, the fruit course
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followed by some really good coffee (Gail asked for tea, instead)
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and then the “main course” of an omelet and “toast”, which was just the way Gail loves it – bread that has been warmed up a bit in the toaster…..
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It was a very nice breakfast, and we enjoyed it both mornings we were there.

Our second day was devoted to Old Town and the Baobab forest, and we started promptly after breakfast. Here again, the map of Old Town
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Note that there are very few “streets” as we would recognize them….mostly Old Town is for burros and for walkers, although the three-wheeled motor-scooter powered “taxis” can navigate almost every alley on the island….and the pedestrian is warned that these guys aren’t the most careful of those who share the space they wish to use. Perhaps the most magnificent structure in Old Town is Leven House
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an ancient trader’s mansion that has undergone a Class 1 restoration in the recent past, and now houses a hotel and restaurant, neither of which we would choose to afford because a night and day there would eat our entire budget for touring Mombasa…ah well. It’s also devilishly hard to photograph unless one owns a boat to shoot it from the water
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so this will have to do….we went inside and it’s really quite spectacular….. as we headed back toward the Fort, we passed Ali’s Curio Market
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which is housed in what was once the police station
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and is located in a prime location directly in line with the Fort entrance. It is a wonderful example of architecture for the tropics
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with balconies all around and a central “chimney” to pull warm air up and out of the rooms surrounding the inner courtyard it covers…… Leaving Old Town, we saw more of the ubiquitous “tri-cabs”
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tried to avoid being splashed
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and said good-bye to the “Neelus Fancy Store”, which is as big a misnomer as we saw in Mombasa:
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The balconies in this part of town actually reminded us of some we’ve seen in LIMA, PERU

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whose object was to allow the ladies of the family to take the air without exposing themselves to the stares of the rabble in the street below….at first, one doubts that there is a connection since Peru is Catholic and Mombasa has a long history of Muslim occupation, but I wondered if the “Moorish” influence in Spain might explain the similarity….in any case many balconies are in a sad state of disrepair
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but notice that this building has TWO levels of balconies on it. Our guide told us that Kenya is looking to provide funds for restoration of these fascinating pieces of Mombasa’s past….one hopes they can manage this before decay takes these beautiful old buildings beyond salvaging. As we passed the Fort again, we noticed a walled area on the other side of the street
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and looked inside….a sign informed all and sundry that this was the Mazrui Cemetery
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the last resting place of a prominent family that had actually RULED MOMBASA for a period in the 17 and 1800s before the British managed to pacify the situation by finally splitting Mombasa off from the dominance of OMAN
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Our map showed us the boulevard (Mama Ngina Drive) that led to the point of the island with the Baobab “forest”, so we started from the traffic circle with the ROTARY CLUB column and headed out…… Soon we stopped to rest in one of the many parks in Mombasa
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and while sitting on a bench, became aware of a giant tree a little ways off
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It was a fig of some kind, masquerading as a banyan, it seemed to me, but even more interesting was the sign on its trunk
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….this was pretty effective, since we didn’t see a single “indencent” person in the entire time we were there. As we left the park after our rest, the “banyanesque” character of the fig tree became even more apparent
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and under it branches were hundreds of pots placed there by an entrepreneurial small businessman who was running a nursery, but had no land of his own…..we saw these operations all over the place both here and in Nairobi. I don’t know if the police just wink at it, or are using it as another revenue source to supplement their income, but it points up the insatiable desire for self-betterment that is such a prominent feature of the human psyche. Every developing country you can name builds at least some of their buildings in the standard way
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with reinforced concrete columns and floors, the walls to be filled in later with the local building materials and then plastered. Kenya was like Bolivia which was like Malaysia in this….although I really do hope there isn’t any earthquake danger in Mombasa
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….didn’t anyone ever hear of a “cold joint”? Yikes. We stopped to change money at a local bank – it looked pretty much like banks at home
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and it had the usual mix of people – some who went out of their way to make you feel cared for and others who treated you as if you were an unwelcome interruption to the really important things they had to do that day….sigh. After a LONG walk and a short tri-cab ride, we finally reached the BAOBABS
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Note the fat trunk, the colorfully dressed locals sharing the park, and the Baobab fruits swinging from the branches
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From here, we walked a block to the ferry “terminal”, which you’ll see in my post about our resort holiday later on, and grabbed a tri-cab taxi back to the hotel – an adventure in itself, since the driver didn’t actually now where the Excellent Hotel was located, so he turned the wrong way and we got to see the famous ELEPHANT TUSKS OF MOMBASA. Sadly, being in the tri-cab precluded good photos, so I got this one
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from the TREK EARTH GALLERY
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After a LONG day with lots of walking, we were ready for bed – and in the morning we headed for the beach!

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