Homeward bound

Here I am sitting at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, Nairobi waiting for my flight to Johannesburg and I feel like something the cat dragged home this morning but more about that later.

Yesterday I had a free day but I still got up early and went down to the beach to have my coffee. Once again it was gorgeous down there. The nicest thing though was being able to go back to bed and catch up on a bit of rest. Fortunately the hotel allowed me to keep my room until 2 pm so I could hang about there all day until an hour before leaving for the airport. Although my flight was only due for departure at 18:50, I decided to try and get on an earlier flight and the only way to do this is to go to the airport early and just take a chance. This time though it was not to be. Kenya Airways dad decided to combine all the afternoon and evening flights from Mombasa to Nairobi into one flight on a Boeing 767 and this flight was due to leave at 18:45. Amazingly, despite only one flight being operated it still was delayed. Actually I don't know why I find that amazing, it is usually surprising when these flights are on time. It eventually left Mombasa at 19:40 and arrived in Nairobi at 20:30. The parking bay was far from the domestic terminal and we waited forever to get off the plane, then had to wait for buses to get to the terminal and then wait some more for the luggage to arrive on the carousel. After all this waiting I got to my hotel just before 10 pm.

I had arranged to meet James, who was the training facilitator for the GeoNetwork component of my trip to Mombasa in December last year, for dinner and drinks and fortunately for me he was still okay with going out. So we went to a little restaurant for a Chinese/Indian mix of food and then when the restaurant closed we moved on to Pizza Garden (I think) for some drinks. It was a really nice evening and FAR more pleasant than sitting in my hotel room. The down side is that I went to bed at 2 am and had to get up just after 4 am. I'm not sure that having those two hours sleep was such a good idea, possibly it would have been better to just carry on until it is time to go to the airport - so next time James I think we should go to Casablanca!

So now it is back home for tonight and on to Maputo tomorrow morning!

One last Mombasa sunrise!

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