Meanwhile, in Merry Madagascar...

Madagascar is voting today on a new Constitution, apparently designed to solve the country's ongoing political crisis. The draft document also happens to lower the minimum age for a President from 40 to 35.

Wonder how they came up with that number?

It will also require any presidential candidate to have been resident in the country for the last 6 months. Given his main opponents are currently in exile (and former President Ravalomanana has been sentenced to 10 years hard labour in absentia), there shouldn't be too many people left to contest the election when he does get round to planning one.

Clever stuff.

Lunatic Express

It's been 2 weeks since I last went to the beach, so I thought I probably deserved another holiday. When a friend rang to say they were renting a cottage in Mombasa, and they had a spare space, I pretty much jumped at the chance. Especially when I heard they were taking the overnight train down, which is something I've been meaning to do for a while.

The train leaves at 7pm from Nairobi (supposedly), and arrives in Mombasa at 10 the next morning. It's really very slow.

It's also pretty rundown, but you can imagine it was quite something in its heyday, whenever that was. The train actually left on time, incredibly, and half an hour later you get called for dinner in the dining cart.

There was a choice of Maryland chicken or wienerschnitzel. I had the beef stew. It was all slightly indistinguishable.

We were staying on the South Coast of Mombasa, which supposedly has the better beaches. To get there, you have to take a ferry across the Likoni channel. The ferries to cross Likoni are legendary - as a quick google search attests:

We spent well over an hour sitting in the car waiting to get on. After all that time, you expect the crossing to be, well, not something you could probably swim across faster.

The crossing itself takes less than five minutes. It all seems a bit ridiculous, but the alternative is to take a 120km diversion, which actually seems to be what google maps recommends you do.

So, 2 and a half hours after getting off the train, we're finally approaching the beach. This is where it gets slightly embarrassing. There were 3 of us travelling overnight on the train. The dining car seats 4 to a table, so a charming Swedish gent called Jacob, who was travelling alone, joined us for dinner. He had arrived in Nairobi that day, and was travelling in Kenya for a week before meeting his fiancee in Uganda. Over the course of dinner, a box of wine (because we are that classy), and many games of cards, we established that he was staying at the Beach House Africa, Maweni Beach, and we were staying at the Maweni Beach Cottages. He seemed harmless enough (most Swedes do), so we obviously offered him to share our taxi to Maweni.

It's only as we're approaching the beach that Jacob asks the driver where exactly his guesthouse is. The rather predictable response came that the "Beach House Africa, Maweni Beach" is, in fact, nowhere near Maweni Beach, and is rather on the North Coast, back on the other side of the Likoni Channel. Fortunately, he seemed very relaxed about the whole thing; a feeling no doubt helped by the sight of the beach.

On the way back, we didn't think we had quite covered enough forms of transport, so we opted for the overnight bus to Nairobi. This leaves at 10.30, arriving at 5 in the morning on Monday (significantly faster than the train, and if you dare peer through the bus's windscreen, you understand why), ensuring we were back at work by 8.

Alternatively, you can always fly directly to the South Coast for £200 return, arriving early on Saturday morning and getting back at a sensible time on Sunday night. But that would miss the whole experience. Sometimes you have to feel like you've earned that break.

Lamu

"Lamu town is the largest town on Lamu island, which in turn is a part of the Lamu archipelago in Kenya. It is also the headquarters of Lamu District".

What did we do before wikipedia? Lamu is one of those places everyone kept telling me I had to go to. It's an old town on the coast, surprisingly close to Somalia, and I've now been twice in the last month. It's very beautiful, especially if you're staying here:





A really rather stunning house, you might recognise from the front cover of the August issue of Architectural Digest. The owners wanted to keep their identity a secret, but they left a clue in the tiles:



It's taken me a year, but I think I might have fallen in with the right crowd.

There are only 3 cars in Lamu: the District Commissioner's car (which has broken down), the ambulance, and the donkey ambulance (for sick donkeys, obviously). Everything else is done by donkeys, which is pretty cool until you've been headbutted in the back for the 10th time by a donkey who thought he had right of way. Also, I suspect some of them might have been watching the Dam Busters a little too often:



One thing you have to do in Lamu is a dhow ride. Sailing on an old boat into the sunset. Preferably with a cocktail.

It's really a very pleasant way to spend a weekend. Beautiful beaches, great food (I think I could get used to the idea of a live-in chef), and slightly too much too drink (it's difficult to buy alcohol in Lamu, so we had to bring our own. Our bags were substantially lighter on the flight back). As always, it's coming back to Nairobi that's the difficult part.