Starting Home

The first wave of our team left the hotel at 7:30 this morning via hotel taxi to the Malindi airport. Wave two left at noon. Sarah leaves tomorrow with the Wicks.

With a few extra hours in Watamu this morning, Kyle, Sarah, Susan and I hired our bird guide Jonathan again to take us to the Mida Creek Reserve. Mida Creek is a large Mangrove forest surrounding this creek that flows out to the Indian Ocean. The tidal plain gets about a meter deep in the area of this suspended walkway that we took out to a larger open expanse to view the birds. The walkway is nearly the length of three football fields.

Susan, Sarah and I tried this dugout canoe to get out around the Mangroves and get a better view of the birds. The canoe wasn’t really necessary – the water was 6-12 inches deep with the tide going out.

Here’s some Sacred Ibis in flight. We saw some Yellow Bill Storks, Pink Flamingos, and a few other species in our time out at the marine sanctuary. Like many of the local eco-projects, part of our tourism dollar goes to help kids get an education.

We made sure our luggage made it on the flight. We should have balanced the luggage better between the two teams – the five of us had about 23 kilos to spare on our 100 kilo allowance, and the other team was about 40 kilos overweight. Malindi airport has a highly automated baggage system – the baggage handler pushed the cart by hand to the aircraft. Once again, only one ID was checked for the entire group of us. Being a satellite airport and not the main regional airport in Nairobi, the boarding passes were hand written, not printed.

Tonight the group of us in Nairobi went to Carnivore for dinner. This is a 30 year old restaurant in Nairobi that served exotic meats like Zebra until 5 years ago when it was banned. Today it’s much like a Brazilian barbeque, but serves farmed crocodile and ostrich. It was still a nice experience.

Here’s a shot of the barbeque pit where the meat is grilled. I think after dinner tonight, and the excellent food at Turtle Bay, many of us will be swearing off meat and dessert for some time to come.