Mr. & Mrs. Vandebilt + kids

Since we ended up staying quite a bit longer at the beach than we originally planned (2 weeks instead of 4 days) we were running out of time before we had to catch our flight to London. We had originally planned on heading back across Kenya to Ugunda for our last 2 weeks in Africa but well, we had gotten lazy. We still wanted to see a bit more of Kenya though so we headed up the coast to Mida Creek.

Mida Creek is about four hours north of Mombasa closer to Malindi (where our friend Safari was from). We read about this CBO (community based organization) eco-camp in our guide books so we stopped in to check it out. They only have three sites available, all built as traditional african huts. The one we were staying in was a traditional Giriama hut, the other two were made of mud and the top of the line model was a two story built out of wood with the top story open. We of course booked ourselves in the cheapest one and settled in for breakfast (included in the price – sweet!)

Breakfast, and all meals for that matter, are served in the treetop restaurant. We had just finished up eating so Jacob headed back down to the hut to grab his book and iPod since we were just going to be chilling in the restaurant come lounge area for the rest of the day. A few minutes later, I could see Jacob coming back out of the hut looking rather unimpressed. He called me down – which truthfully made me a bit worried. Now that shouldn’t be surprising to anyone, seeing as I worry quite easily, but the look on his face made me think that all our stuff was gone.


I walked in to the hut to find that we had indeed had a visitor. All of our stuff was luckily still there, but it seems our new friend had been hungry. I’m not entirely sure what kind of animal had made it’s way into our grass hut, but it had managed to chew two holes through Jacob’s bag that would have been at least 3 inches wide. It had also chewed his basically brand new headphones into a dozen pieces. We were only gone for about 25 minutes.

Now I wouldn’t say I’m scared of animals – I assumed it wasn’t a cat or bird which I am terrified of, but the thought of sleeping with rats and rodents isn’t an idea that thrills me. We figured we should probably let the staff know that we had some animal problems and they upgraded us to their best hut – woohoo! We spent the first night sleeping on the top story with the wind blowing through, it was awesome.

Since it is an eco-camp and a CBO all of the food that they serve comes from local farmers or fishermen and has to be available in the area. It is also guaranteed to be fresh since there’s no electricity, none of it can be stored. The meals we ate while we were at the eco-camp was some of the best food I’ve ever eaten.

Like I mentioned, there’s no electricity on site, so we spent our days lounging around in the treetop restaurant/lounge reading the books and napping. The view was spectacular. All around us were mango pineapple and cashew trees with the creek off in the distance. The peace and quiet was only interrupted by Coco the donkey, on staff to haul the soda in from the main road.

During our stay at the eco-camp we met up with our friend Safari who had traveled to his home town to visit his son. He took us around Malindi and to the Gede ruins. They are the remains of a 13th century village. It was a peaceful walk around the old stones through the trees. It reminded me of Angkor Wat but on a much smaller scale. We finished the day off with a walk on the beach. Perfect.

Our last night at the eco-camp they hired a few locals to come in and do some traditional dancing. They lit the bonfire and went through their rituals and ceremonial dances. It was pretty magical sitting under the stars in a place that is kilometres away from any kind of electricity with huge homemade drums being pounded on. Is it any wonder I fell in love with Kenya?