Mombasa again

Why is it that when you have to run to get to a boarding gate before it closes that the boarding gate is located at the opposite end of the terminal to where you are? I made my way to the airport early enough yesterday to be in good time for my flight but when I checked my suitcase in I was told that my flight had been cancelled. This flight was the first of three connecting flights so it was important that I get a flight that would allow me to get onto the second flight. The only way for this to happen was for me to get onto the flight that was almost ready to leave. I was given my boarding pass and told to run! As I got to the gate, the ground staff commented that I was the last passenger. This has only happened to me once before on a flight from Sydney to Johannesburg where the delay was due to a Qantas strike action of the ground staff. Anyway there were two benefits to getting on this flight: 1. I was bumped up to business class for that flight and 2. My suitcase got a priority tag. This last fact helped once I got to Nairobi where I had to collect my suitcase before beetling across from the international to the domestic terminal with very little time to spend waiting for my suitcase. At the end of the day though everything went okay. It is rather maddening though that despite Mombasa being only about 5 hours away from Durban, it took me 14 hours to reach my destination!

I am staying at the Mombasa Beach Hotel. I stayed here three years but in my head I could not figure out which hotel it was - I have stayed at most of the hotels in this area of Nyali so now they all just blur together. When I saw the passageway to my room it all came flooding back. This is the hotel where I managed to lock myself out of my room at about six in the morning when I was going swimming. I ended up having to sheepishly make my way to the reception in my swimmers to get someone to open the room for me.

The hotel itself is not overly great! It is old and definitely in need of attention. Everything seems to be flaking and fading and the food is definitely not to my taste. The view from my room does go a long way to making me feel better about staying here.


The data working party (the reason for me being here) got underway today. I have known most of the participants for quite a long time so it has been great catching up with everyone. I had to give two presentations today - torture for someone who hates getting up to speak in front of people. Both the presentations went okay though and the questions that I had to field were not difficult. I am exhausted after it all so it is early to bed for me tonight!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A little fun in Mombasa

Image
It was so good to be back in Mombasa. It was 9 month since my last visit. This time I stayed at the Bahari Beach Hotel. Amazingly I had not stayed at this hotel before. Initially I had thought that I had been there but the beach hotels in Nyali are starting to all look the same to me. The Bahari Beach Hotel is a lovely place and I enjoyed it even though I was there for a series of back-to-back meetings. My bedroom was super comfortable with a lovely hard mattress. The only issue I had was that the in-room safe initially worked intermittently but eventually was fixed and for my inconvenience was given dinner and a glass of wine at the duty manager's expense. The gardens were really beautiful and a tranquil sight to wake up to every morning. And I loved watching the cats cavorting around the grounds while having breakfast. Unfortunately the tides were against me so only managed one walk on the beach but I did get to swim and I had fun one evening watching some Maasai dancers.
Read more

Roasting in Comoros

Image
After a dreadful series of flights on Kenya Airways to Mombasa last week, I started on this trip with some trepidation. My concerns were for naught really though. The inbound flight from Nairobi to Johannesburg arrived on time which gave me a lot of confidence that my flight would leave on time. In the end we left a half hour late but this was due to a passenger not having the correct travel documents and his luggage had to be unloaded. The wait in Nairobi was quite endless but I spent my time getting some exercise by walking up and down the departure gate corridors. There are only two so it was a bit monotonous but better than just sitting around. The flight to the Comoros departed quite late as the inbound flight was late. This meant that instead of arriving in Comoros at 23:35 we arrived at about 00:30. The Dreamliner arriving at OR Tambo International Airport There were ten of us that were arriving in Comoros for the same meeting and all of us needed to apply for a visa
Read more

Maputo

Image
My one night at home was a welcome change from sterile hotel rooms but there was so much to do and before long my suitcase was packed again. I thought that I would be nervous flying this morning since I was flying with SA Airlink who have had a bit of a bad time recently with accidents and incidents but I was completely okay. Maybe 2010 is my year for having discarded my fear of flying completely but the real proof will be next month when I fly from Mauritius to Seychelles and back on Air Seychelles since it is thanks to Air Seychelles that I developed this ridiculous fear in the first place. What contributed to my enjoyment of the flight was that it was on another cute little turbo propelled aircraft, this time a Jetstream 41. It only takes 29 people and there were only 11 on-board making it really comfy. Take-off was to the north-east so we had a lovely view of Durban and I couldn't help thinking as we flew over uShaka Marine World that that was the closest I have been to my off
Read more