Sailing

With a public holiday during the school half-term came a chance to go to the beach, for the first family beach holiday for two years, with previous attempts at Easter 2020 and Easter 2021 both being cancelled due to COVID-related domestic travel bans. Having been to Malindi, Diani and Mombasa, this trip we went to Kilifi, the least touristy of the remaining tourist places on the Coast (another, more touristy and more high-end one is Watamu which we visited during this trip).

Kilifi is a very local town with only 2 hotels of note alone with many smaller hostels, backpacker places and airbnbs. We stayed in one of the hotels which has a water sports club based on its beach so that we could be close to the sports club, would get some activities thrown in as part of the package, and to make life easy (we even went full-board). 

Over the 5 days, we got into a routine with runs in the morning, breakfast, swimming pool, lunch, water sports, dinner. The water sports included sailing small boats, windsurfing, catamaran, and scuba-diving (for Hannah only as Leah is not old enough) for the kids, with Andrea and I also doing some. The hotel also had some entertainment in the evenings and a Crazy Golf Course; Crazy Golf was even crazier when we did it as it since it had rained the previous day and some of the course was still under water or had obstacles that had fallen from the trees!

Windsurfing proved too hard for Leah, with the heavy sail, but Hannah managed well, and without too much wind it was not too difficult. Sailing was quite successful, and the kids enjoyed the catamarans' speed. Hannah is such a good swimmer, that she normally spends half her time under water anyway, so her first scuba-dive in the pool went very easily for her. Next time we'll see if she can try something in the sea or take a course if she is interested.

We drove an hour north up the coast twice to visit some friends who were staying in Watamu, which has a lot of high-end hotels, to spend time by the pool with them and also go snorkeling from a glass-bottom boat. There is not that colorful coral left (appararently after an el nino event sometime ago) but what is left still supports a decent amount of fish which is fantastic to swim amongst when the tide is low. The tide is very dramatic on this part of the coast with it changing a few metres in height each day, which translates to the sea going out tens or even hundreds of metres until there is a deeper drop. Dropping some bread into the ocean never fails to attract fish for those who are impatient!

During COVID-19 quite a few people worked from the coast, and that seems to have helped many of the tourism and hospitality places survive without as many short-term tourists. Kilifi has organised an annual New Year Party for a while and whilst we were there this year also organised another event though of a different nature - mainly yoga, mediation, talks and the likes. 

The final note on Kilifi? Well just like the rest of the Coast, they move at their own pace, which is slow. Even the motorbike taxis, the minibuses as well as the cars, service and everything goes slowly.

Meanwhile, during our vacation the President announced the end of the curfew after 18 months so bar's and restaurants are all open late again and Kenyans have eagerly gone out to enjoy themselves. Traffic is often high Friday and Saturday evenings (at least for the moment) and there is loud music from our nearest bar (smack in a residential area, but I don't think there are many rules around that) although usually only until about 11pm. So apart from the mask-wearing "requirement" that is not really followed any more, no other restrictions really remain for now, since the rates are so low.

Though only 5% of adults are double vaccinated, about 15% have had a first dose, and because these are mostly in the cities, in Nairobi it is over 30% of adults with a first dose. Combined with the high levels of immunity from infection over the last 18 months it looks like COVID is mostly a thing of the past here (and the weather is getting hotter anyway for the next 4 months, not that it was particularly cold).