Malindi and around
When Vasco da Gama’s fleet arrived at MALINDI in 1498, it met an unexpectedly warm welcome. The king of Malindi had presumably heard of Mombasa’s attempts to sabotage the fleet a few days earlier and, no friend of Mombasa himself, he was swift to ally himself with the powerful and dangerous Portuguese. Until they finally subdued Mombasa nearly one hundred years later, Malindi was the Portuguese centre of operations on the East African coast. Once Fort Jesus was built, Malindi’s ruling family was invited to transfer their power base there, which they did, and for many years Malindi was virtually a ghost town as its aristocrats lived it up in Mombasa under Portuguese protection.
Malindi’s reputation for hospitality to strangers has stuck, and so has the suggestion of sell-out. It has an amazingly salacious reputation, and although recent travel advisories have hit Malindi hard, a quick glance in some of the bars suggests that the sex safari is still in full swing, mostly dominated by Italians. With many hotels and tourist activities quoting prices in euros, Malindi is slipping towards cultural anonymity: it can’t seem to make up its mind whether it wants to be a Mombasa or a Lamu. While its old centre clings on to some Swahili character, it lacks Lamu’s self-contained tranquillity. And although it makes a good base for visits to Gedi and the Arabuko Sokoke Forest, and for a trip to Lamu, it remains unashamedly geared towards beach tourism.
Consequently, whether you enjoy Malindi or not depends a little on how highly you rate the unsophisticated parts of Kenya, and whether you appreciate a fully fledged resort town for its facilities or loathe it for its tackiness. It also depends on when you’re here. During December and January, the town can sometimes be a bit nightmarish, with everything African seeming to recede behind the swarms of window-shopping tourists and Suzuki jeeps.
Fortunately, Malindi has some important saving graces. Number one is the coral reef south of the town centre. The combined Malindi/Watamu Marine National Park and Reserve encloses some of the best stretches on the coast, and the Malindi fish have become so used to humans that they swarm in front of your mask like a kaleidoscopic snowstorm. Malindi is also a game-fishing centre with regular competitions, and it’s also something of a surfing, windsurfing and kitesurfing resort, too. Good-sized rollers steam into the bay through the long break in the reef, opposite the town, between June and late September, whipped up by the southerly monsoon (kusi) wind. The surfing isn’t world class, but it’s fun, and good enough for boogie boards.
Meanwhile, an interesting old Swahili quarter, one or two historical sites, a busy market, shops, hotelis and plenty of lodgings just about manage to balance out the tourist boutiques, beauty salons and real-estate agencies. As for the Italian influence, the new resident expats have brought the town riches that nowhere else in Kenya can boast – and some of the best pizzas, pasta and ice cream in the whole of Africa.
Malindi’s beaches
The beach near the town centre, several hundred metres east of Lamu Road, is windswept and less appealing than you might imagine. For more of a seaside atmosphere, the seafront Vasco da Gama Road further south is pleasant, especially in the late afternoon. For the real McCoy, beach-wise, you need to go further south of the town centre to the aptly named Silversands Beach, complete with its reef-fringed lagoon, palm trees and inevitable beach boys.
Sea and water conditions in Malindi
Malindi’s shoreline can get very windy around September, and during June, July and November the beach becomes covered in seaweed – many hotels clear their beachfronts daily, though the seaweed is clean and perfectly harmless, and in fact prevents erosion of the beach (clearing it is prohibited within the limits of the marine park). It’s also worth knowing that the headland of Vasco da Gama Point marks a locally important division. To the north, the sea water is often reddish-brown and cloudy – full of the soil erosion brought down by the Galana (Sabaki) River, especially after rain – and, to the south, the Marine Park encloses a zone of often aquarium-clear water.
The Tana Delta
North out of Malindi, the road to Lamu sets off as a tarmac highway, crosses the Sabaki (Galana) River and passes one or two resort developments and the anachronistic little seaside town of MAMBRUI, with its pretty mosque, semi-ruined pillar tomb and the unusual spectacle of cows on the beach. The idyllic kitesurfing base of Che Shale is further up the coast on the south side of the Ras Ngomeni peninsula. About 60km north of Malindi, you leave the shambas and scattered homesteads behind and enter the bush of the Tana Delta, with the road arrowing straight across the flat, gentle landscape, brown and arid, or grey-green and swampy, depending on the season.
The former ferry-crossing town of Garsen has been sidelined by the tarmac New Garsen Causeway, which sweeps over the Tana River 7km to the south of the flyblown town before petering out into a dirt track after you reach Witu. Garsen has a KCB bank with an ATM and, in season, some of the best and cheapest mangoes in Kenya.
Between the river and the end of the trip, the scenery can pall, but if you’re on the bus, the journey is always enlivened by the other passengers and by stops at various small Tana delta towns and villages. Occasional flashes of colour – the sky-blue cloaks of Orma herders or the red, black and white of shawled Somali women – break up the journey, along with wonderful birdlife and some big game, too: especially giraffe and antelope (notably waterbuck), and even the odd elephant if you look hard enough. The road passes right through the Kipini sanctuary.
Note that parts of this area were severely affected by ethnic violence in 2012, 2013 and 2014 (see Trouble in the delta); at the time of writing most government travel advisories were still warning travellers to avoid it.
Trouble in the delta
Despite progress at the micro level with initiatives like those of Delta Dunes Lodge and the Lower Tana Delta Trust, the threats to the Tana Delta region seem to be accumulating. After the failure of a highly damaging irrigation and rice-growing project in the 1990s, the latest, environmentally disastrous, idea is a gigantic biofuel project, that would carpet more than 200 square kilometres of bush and flood land with sugar-cane plantations for cheap ethanol – plans that may not be entirely prevented by the delta being recently put under international protection as Kenya’s sixth Ramsar Site – a wetlands area of global importance.
Competition for scarce resources is also pitching communities against each other: in 2012 and 2013, more than one hundred people from the pastoralist Orma and farming Pokomo communities were killed in alternate raids on each other’s villages, sparked by disputes over water and grazing rights. There were fresh attacks in 2014, when gunmen claiming to be part of the Islamist group Al-Shabaab attacked a passenger bus and several villages in Tana River and Lamu counties, killing 87 people. Though no foreign visitors were affected, travel advisories were still warning against visiting the region as this book went to print and if you’re travelling by private vehicle, the police may require you to travel in convoy anywhere east of Garsen. Wherever you are hoping to visit, it’s a good idea to seek local advice before attempting an independent excursion to the area.
Watamu
WATAMU can at first sight seem a bit superficial, consisting simply of a small agglomeration of hotels, a strip of beachfront private homes, a compact village shaded by coconut trees, and the beach. There are good reasons to come here, however, including the superb marine park, some interesting wildlife initiatives, youthful nightlife (sporadically) and the beautiful beach itself. Watamu is comfortable with tourists, and despite tourism’s high profile, there’s a discernibly easier-going atmosphere here than at Diani, Malindi or along Mombasa’s north coast. As most of the beach is within the marine park, KWS regulations tend to be more strictly enforced to keep hawkers away.
This is an exceptional shoreline, with three stunning bays – Watamu Bay, the Blue Lagoon and Turtle Bay – separated by raised coral cliffs and dotted with tiny, sculpted coral islets. Watamu is good for diving – and a good place to get qualified, with several diving schools. Out in the Watamu Marine National Park, when the visibility is good, the submerged crags of living coral gardens and their swirls of brilliant fish are still magically vivid, although like elsewhere they are suffering from contact damage and the steady rise in sea temperature.