African Tour:Diani Beach

Seronera Airstrip
Serengeti National Park
When my time at the Maasai Mara/Serengeti was up, Edgar drove me to the airport. Rather than drive me all the way back to Nairobi, he took me to the Seronera Airstrip, a patch of dirt inside the Serengeti National Park. That was where we parted ways. We only knew each other for two weeks, but he showed me the time of my life. While I will always remember our time together, he probably moved on to his next group right away and drove around the parks he has driven around a thousand times before.

Rather than board a Boeing 737 or Embraer 190 jet airliner, I got on a nine-passenger turboprop Cessna 208 Caravan. The flight to Mombasa was less than 90 minutes. The flight from Nairobi to Mombasa is only an hour, but driving from the Mara to Nairobi would have taken at least five hours. The hotel picked me up at Moi International Airport and drove me to Diani Beach.

I spent four nights at the Southern Palms Beach Resort on Diani Beach, just south of Mombasa. It could not have been more different from any of the national parks. My cabin at Amboseli was pretty nice as far as national parks go, but my room at the beach resort looked like a room at a four star beach resort. It might have been larger than all my rooms at the Mara, Amboseli, and Lake Nakuru combined. Maybe that is a slight exaggeration, but only barely.

Though not on an island, the resort was surrounded by water. It looked like all the buildings were designed around the swimming pools rather than the other way around. Just past the beach was the Indian Ocean.

The resort was in the town of Ukunda, which probably had something to offer. I never really saw much of it. There were no gate times and I could come and go as I pleased, but saw little reason to leave the resort and beach.

Diani Beach is supposed to be the most popular beach in all of Kenya. Fortunately, I was not there during the high season. There were always people on the beach, but it was never crowded. Sometimes there were enough people for the owners of the camels to offer rides. Having ridden a horse in Kommetjie, I thought about riding a camel on Diani Beach, but the horses looked more independent.

There was a coral reef just off the coast. It is one of the more popular tourist activities, other than riding camels on the beach. I prefer getting to know the culture rather than doing tourist crap anytime I go somewhere new, but I rarely get the chance to snorkel at a coral reef. So I joined a bunch of white foreigners and dove in. I could not identify 90% of the fish and coral I saw, but it was beautiful all the same. I can barely identify any flowers beyond the tulips at Keukenhof, but I love going there all the same.

Staying at a beach resort at the end of the safari was part of the package deal. I thought it was unnecessary at first. If I subtracted those days at the resort, I could spend more time in the parks. But I came to realize that a few days at a beach resort was an excellent way to end my time in Africa. The national parks are outstanding, but they require a lot of moving around and trying to get somewhere in time. A beach resort requires absolutely nothing of you. Do what you want, when you want. There was plenty of food, the Indian Ocean, and an excellent series of swimming pools. It was not a bad way to spend a long weekend.