THE END OF THE AFRICA TRIP

back to Mombasa and drive up the coast to Watamu – 100 km took 4 hours (madness).  I don’t think we would have gone there if we had known.  Originally we would have had 1 night here and then got the train back overnight but now we have to fly we are staying 2 nights.  We thought of driving or bus but 8 – 12 hours and not much cheaper.

We are staying at a marine research centre a little back from the beach in among a lot of bush.  Very cheeky monkeys keep getting into the dining room.

I liked the setting, but the rooms were very cramped and the whole thing ran like a church camp with everyone having to pitch in with cooking and washing up and prayers before food.  No choice of food or eating time either. 

Early start to Arabuko Sokoke Forest – mainly birds although there are elephant and other large animals.  It is quite dense and you need a guide.  Luckily the guide we had was brilliant at finding birds.  The first thing we saw was the Golden rumped elephant shrew.  We saw 2 wood owls early on then a lot of other small birds and a colourful Trogon and then we came to an abrupt stop. 

Somehow the van bumper had come off, gone under the van, got stuck and one end wedged in the back sliding door.  The door would not open so we were stuck inside.  The driver and guide tried lots of things with no success but then Steve started suggesting things to them and eventually they got the door open.  Of again – one of the things I liked in this forest is that the guide kept stopping the car and then we would go for a trek into the bush to find the birds, the driver would then continue to us to pick us up again.  I felt like a real old style African safari person on a hunt (but not a killing one).

We did 3 hours here then had to leave to fit in the snorkelling trip – luckily the guide said the fee lasted all day so we could go back later.

BUT the staff that took us out on the boat were amazing, very knowledgeable and friendly.  The snorkelling here was by far the best on the whole trip with incredible numbers of fish species and quite a lot of pristine coral.

The researchers/rangers explained how poachers were destroying fish stocks, the locals just shot them if they found them poaching.  Kenya has a shoot to kill law for poachers – it must be working as their wildlife is growing, while neighbouring Tanzania is still in decline.

Back to the park to a different area where we saw the very small and rare Sokoke Skops Owl (6.5” high).  It was a real battle with bushes and branches to be able to get near enough to see it, he was beautiful.  There are 5 critically globally threatened species of which this owl is one.  We saw 3 of the others too, the Armani sunbird, Spotted ground thrush and Sokoke pipit.  Pretty lucky.

It is a pretty alive park with 270 species of bird (of which we only saw about 25), 40 mammal species, 49 reptiles and 25 amphibians.

There is supposed to be a tree top viewing platform – we drove past it but most of it is missing and unusable which is a shame.

It was a great way to end the trip, as tomorrow we fly back to Nairobi and home