It was reassuring to have someone from our holiday rental in Diani Beach, Kenya, greet us at Mombasa airport after dealing with the unsympathetic staff of Kenyan Airways, which couldn’t manage to get our bags on the same flight as us on the first leg of our journey from South Africa. Less reassuring was the fact our driver appeared to be confused as to how we should track down our lost bags, despite telling us “this happens all the time”.
On the drive to our accommodation at Diani Beach, a 45-minute drive south of Mombasa, the second largest city in Kenya, we were – despite having toured the townships in Cape Town – struck by the poverty we saw as we sweltered in the van. You could describe the scenes we passed as ‘colourful’, such as the busy roadside stalls where locals buy fresh water, or ‘disheartening’, such as the busy roadside stalls where locals have to buy fresh water because there’s no water connected to their homes.
Our alarm at the poverty – tiny thatched-roof homes with dirt floors, businesses operating from ramshackle corrugated iron huts, rickety little wooden stands for shops – didn’t diminish the next day on our drive back to the airport where we had to return to pick up our luggage from the well-meaning but comically inefficient airline and customs staff. Had we not have been so tired and cranky, we might have found some humour in the situation.
Arriving at Diani Beach, by contrast, was like arriving at an affluent seaside village. Probably because it is. Diani Beach’s lodgings and spas, mostly foreign-owned beach resorts, villas and cottages, are supported by well-stocked supermarkets, bars, live music venues, discos, and an overabundance of Italian restaurants. The latter was one of the biggest disappointments, as one of our key missions in each place was to learn about the local food.
Our Home Away from Home at Diani Beach, Mombasa, Kenya
Diani Beach locals, set up in thatched stalls along the side of the road running the length of the coastal town, sell wood carvings, textiles and trinkets to tourists, most of whom flock here during the December-February high season. They also work in the hospitality and service industries which support the tourists and expats, returning to their modest homes in nearby villages at night.
At the far end of the road, our ‘home away from home’ in Kenya for a fortnight is Shambani Cottages Diani Beach. After passing through the high security gate, we were met by half a dozen friendly members of staff (and we would meet even more), a sizeable number considering this wasn’t a proper resort, but a cluster of thatched-roof cottages offering self-catering and/or the services of a cook.
Feeling a little jet-lagged after almost 20 hours of travel and three flights from Cape Town to Mombasa, we happily ate some serviceable food made by our cook and tried to settle in. Considering we had no luggage and no change of clothes that should have been easy.
But the heat and humidity were uncomfortable, which is saying something after almost eight years living in Dubai and Abu Dhabi. And the promised Internet – the installation of which our project sponsor, HomeAway, had paid for so we could continue to update you all on our experiences – ominously wasn’t yet working, and would never really work properly.
Overlooking the lack of internet, deficit of luggage, and the fact that the ceiling fans were proving to be an unworthy adversary against the humidity, Shambani Cottages was quite beautiful. Everywhere you cast your eyes there were towering coconut palms, frangipani trees, colourful chirping birds, and, best of all, striking Angolan Colobus monkeys and other primates passing through our trees.
A decent sized and very enticing swimming pool sits in the middle of the verdant garden, which is just as well as Shambani Cottages are a good 10-minute walk to the actual Diani beach – where there are more souvenir sellers pestering you on the sand than mosquitoes and bugs at the cottage after the sun goes down. And that’s no small feat!
The cottages themselves are nicely decorated in an African style, with woven lampshades, leopard print cushions on the sofas, and wooden musical instruments on the walls. Though they’re very basic, with no mod-cons, which is somewhat at odds with the number of staff hovering around – including a cook to make you meals three times a day if you choose.
Given the state of kitchen hygiene at the cottages, we were quickly regretting that we’d agreed to test out the cook’s services, wishing we’d opted to eat out instead – except we had a lot of blogging to catch up on, having been so busy experiencing Cape Town. And what we didn’t realise that first day, was that we were about to fall even more behind.
But having said that, we did enjoy some of the traditional Kenyan dishes that the cook prepared for us, including a simple kachumburi salad and a Swahili chicken curry, we just wish we’d been able to get some Kenyan cooking lessons and been able to use the kitchen to cook dishes to share here on the blog, as we’d been able to do in all the other places we’d settled into this year.
Eating out in Diani Beach, however, requires some planning ,as Shambani’s staff don’t recommended you walk the streets after sunset, the mobile phone service from the cottages is dodgy, and taxis can be hard to come by when Diani Beach gets into full-swing during high season.
Once you are out, the cuisine at local restaurants around the village would suggest you’ve time-travelled rather than taken a taxi, with menus perfectly preserved in aspic from the 1970s. Lobster Thermidor, anyone? It was also next to impossible to find Kenyan food, with nearly all the restaurants serving European food, mostly Italian.
The staff back at Shambani – well, most of them – did try to help, but their lack of training and supervision is readily apparent. Despite us telling the well-meaning cook that we didn’t require meals on several occasions, he still hung around the cottage, leaving us with no privacy most of the time.
One morning we woke up to find two fishermen standing on our steps with bags of seafood to sell. Our cook, who was present, ignored them, despite us telling him we’d be eating out, as we needed to try the Diani Beach restaurants, plus we were going on safari to the Masai Mara for a few days, leaving them for us to deal with.
The ‘management’ team, on the other hand, was happy to leave us to our own devices – ignoring our complaints, and making no apologies for the fan that functioned only on one slow speed; the electricity that went off in the wee hours of the morning for most of the night every night, leaving us to swelter as we tossed and turned; the mosquito net with holes that allowed the buzzing pests to enter (Lara still has the scars); the toilet that didn’t function properly; and the internet that went off continually.
Unlike most hospitality staff, they worked their jobs like government contractors. The only thing missing was the sound of a time clock being punched on their arrival and departure every day.
We did enjoy conversations with our excellent maid, Emily, an intelligent, much under-utilised staff member with hospitality qualifications specialising in front office management, who should have been running the place; the friendly security guys who guarded the property from sunset until dawn from sun-beds by the swimming pool where they would take turns each night to sit with a machete on their lap; and Jeff, the internet guy, who frequently visited us.
The troop of four Colobus monkeys that often hung around the compound for hours on end, also provided welcome entertainment.
If you’re looking for a beach resort with mod-cons and five-star trimmings, this property is clearly not for you. If you’re sensitive to heat and humidity and want creature comforts, rather than creatures crawling over your body, you will definitely want to look elsewhere too.
But if you’re happy with simple accommodation in Diani Beach, in gorgeous gardens with a swimming pool, it’s a great base from which to take safaris* and hit the beach occasionally.
However, given that Diani Beach is basically a tourism construct, you’re not going to even remotely live like locals, as we quickly discovered, and that was one of our project goals this year. Of course, in some destinations on our yearlong grand tour, we’ve appreciated that living like locals isn’t always possible.
Interviewed for the website of our project sponsor HomeAway, the owner of the beautiful Bali villa that we stayed at said on the top tips by owners page: “It is difficult to live like a local in Bali, as most Balinese people live on $50 a month and believe in a spirit world.”
It’s pretty much the same reality here in Diani Beach, conflated by the fact that the local monkey population lost 75% of its coastal habitat in the process of establishing Diani Beach as a tourist destination over the last 20 years. Would I return to Diani Beach? Yes, to volunteer at the Colobus Trust to help some of the locals still get to live like locals in the future.
* There is an airfield at Diani Beach with direct flights to the Masai Mara, making it a brilliant launching pad for safaris.
Sadly, this is often the norm in developing countries with stunning coastlines.
Busy beaches are certainly more prevalent in developing countries. Thailand, Bali and Mexico all have their fair share, but I can think of tranquil beaches in those countries, where either local laws keep vendors off the sand or locals have better ways to make a living. The problem is out of control in Kenya.
Some travellers don’t mind bustling beaches – they’re just not our idea of fun. We loved the Kenyans we met, loved the safaris and cultural experiences, and would return for those or a volunteer experience, but until the govt brings this under control, we won’t go back for the beach.
It sounds like you had little choice but to stay at Shambani Cottages, which is one of the relatively new developments at the north end of Diani Beach. There’s more forest and slightly less raw feel further south along Diani Beach, beyond the coast highway junction. As for pestering on the beach, yes, that’s Diani, and there’s no avoiding it. I’d always advise people to find some kind of “friend” early on and once you’ve formed some kind of bond, the others are much less persistent.
But as you found, it’s not a place where you can easily live like a local while also being on holiday. To do that, you really should have gone to Lamu island, at the northern end of the coast. The intact medieval town plan of Lamu town itself includes dozens of guest houses and private houses and after a few days adjustment you start to feel part of what is an urban, seaside community of Swahili people that goes back more than 1000 years. It’s a brilliant, unique place – reminiscent of Zanzibar but much smaller – and the beach on Lamu is one of Kenya’s best, with no beachboy hassle.
Thanks for your comment Richard. You’re correct with your first assumption, we did look at properties at Lamu, but Diani appeared convenient with the flights to Masai Mara. We were also interested in the Colobus monkeys at Diani as well.
The property did have a ‘friend’ on the beach – and they insisted on escorting us to meet him – it didn’t really make much difference – perhaps he’s not a ‘don’ of the beach boy mafia ;)
We’ll definitely keep Lamu in mind when we hopefully go back on a monkey mission next year.
Cheers,
T
Creatures crawling all over your body – eek, I think I’d pass on this place. It can also be frustrating when the place you’re staying seems so far removed from the rest of society. Thanks for the honest review!