Over Easter weekend, we planned a non-traditional vacation. We booked two nights on Wasini Island at Mpunguti Lodge just off the South Coast of Kenya.
At first I thought the lodge was on the mainland, but when we parked and met up with the employees, they ushered us with all our bags, to the pier and we boarded a little motor boat. I've never traveled to my "hotel" by boat before, so this was pretty thrilling.
Here's the lodge--the buildings with the blue and white. When we arrived, the tide was low, so we stepped down from the boat about 200 meters from this cliff, and we waded through the water with flip flops in hand. Then we climbed some steep steps that took us up the side of the cliff to our lodge.
The view from our room was amazing! Here's Reyna hanging out on the patio outside our door.
Next to our little patio was this cool turret. The local island kids especially liked playing on and jumping from it during high tide.
After settling in to our room, and eating a nice meal, we took a short swim at the base of the cliff. By this time, the tide was in. As the sun set, we took a quick visit to the island's main attraction, The Coral Gardens. The island, by the way, is only 5 km long and 1 km wide, so we walked. No cars on the island.
The gardens were just full of these coral formations that used to all be under the water. They had built these board walks so people could walk through the garden when the tide is low. We arrived late, so the water was covering the boardwalk in some places. It was awesome!
As we hiked through the village, it was nice to see how the people who lived on the island really did seem to live by this idea of "Pole pole!" (Slowly, or take your time). I saw some mamas doing their laundry, and they seemed even to do their laundry slowly. We also saw some farms, a coconut grove and other cool things as we hiked around the island.
The next morning, this is what we woke up to:
Couldn't you get used to this? I love the ocean.
We had big plans for the day. We planned to travel 45 minutes by boat to the Kisite/Mpunguti Marine National Park. This was our guide, Shay. He was awesome with the boys. They loved playing with him...
...and Andre loved playing with his phone.
There's the marine park.
There's no building. There's really only a small mound of land. The park is below the water! Under the water is a bunch of coral and hundreds of fish. We easily saw 40 different types of fish.
Here's a nice picture of a dhow (boat), similar to the one that we were riding in. I wanted so much to snap a photo of the boys in the water, but I was so close to barfing, it just wasn't a good time. Once I felt better, Reyna and I were let out on the tiny island and we played in the white sand and tiny crystal clear waves.
Oh! I almost completely forgot!!!! On the way to the marine park, we saw a pod of dolphins!!! Dolphins jumping around together in the wild! Sometimes 5 or 6 dolphins synchronized jumping together. It was awesome how they seemed to want to perform around the boats. Hunter will post a video later.
On Easter Sunday, we got out the Easter egg decorating kit that Magra mailed to the kids. She's the best at keeping up traditions. The boys were so happy. The staff at the hotel were happy to boil some eggs for our breakfast.
Paulo set up this cool little "beach wedding" for his egg and my egg.
Failed Easter family photo:
Pow Pow did some last minute fishing with Shay before we checked out. These skinny "crocodile fish" were pretty tasty.
