Leaving Lamu

After a few days in Lamu, it was time to head back to Nairobi for the Intermission Retreat.  It's only a little more than a couple of hours to fly, so I landed in Nairobi by 1:45 in the afternoon.  I took one of the small motorboats back across the channel to the airport.  Since it's hot weather around here nearly year-round, the airport waiting room is open air.  It would have been nice to have a bit of air conditioning, but at least there's shade.  

 In the photo above, you can see Lamu along the coast of the island across the channel. The water was a beautiful color as we flew down the coast, although the pictures aren't great as the plane window was quite smudged.

Inland, it's dusty and dry.

Once I landed back at Nairobi Wilson airport, I had a while to wait because I had planned for someone from the Monduli crowd to pick me up as they passed the airport on their way up, as they were all driving up that day.  It was a bit stressful at first because I couldn't get my phone to work, even though I'd bought a roaming bundle that should have allowed me to use whatsapp in Kenya.  I couldn't get a Kenyan sim card because all the official sim card sellers are only allowed to sell sim cards to people with Kenyan IDs.  I'm sure it's possible somewhere to get a sim card without said ID, but the places at the airport follow the law.  Finally someone told me that there was a Java House restaurant down by the private jet area that has good wifi.  That was a wonderful move--the food was great, the wifi was strong, and they didn't mind at all that I stayed for six hours since they weren't too busy.  I splurged on the crazy sundae below.  My waiter was really nice; they close at nine except for a side part for private functions, but he offered to let me stay anyhow rather than sending me outside at night.  Fortunately, I had been in contact with the Monduli crowd and Ralph and Twyla Williams had agreed to stop and get me, and they would be arriving soon, so I headed back down by the airport entrance to meet them.  It was pretty late by the time we arrived, after 11 pm.  Tomorrow Intermission begins!