Woke and sat up to watch a two-manned dhow sail across a spectacular red/orange sunrise – a curtain of light falling through a break in the clouds near the horizon, the sea quiet and calm in the early morning.
Enjoyed a lazy breakfast before piling into the truck with three English travellers for company and drove up the coast to the Marine National Park. We boarded a glass-bottomed boat and motored out through the rocky reef to a deeper section, where I snorkelled for the first time in my life in a kaleidoscope of colourful fish of all shapes and sizes - some purple with yellow stripes, some blue and pink - and corals in pastel shades, a wonderland through which I floated, part of the quiet and calmness below the surface, a world I want to see more of (this Kenya snorkel was one of the reasons I later learned to scuba dive).
Back on Stanley, thoroughly relaxed by my morning, we headed into town to shop for our planned evening barbecue feast, buying a huge slab of sirloin steak at the butcher, and mullet, rock cod and trout at the fish market. Preparations began immediately we got back to camp, including hand making mayonnaise under Myrta's guidance, passing the bowl and fork - we didn't have a whisk - from hand to hand to beat.
Dinner was a gargantuan and scrumptious celebration of getting this far: steak, fish, mayonnaise, mustard marinade, ratatouille, and my candied bananas. We ate beside a fire on the edge of the beach, watching smugglers launch their boats in the dark and clouds race across the sky; moonlight fashioned rainbows overhead.
Slept out again.
Image by wirestock on Freepik
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