What's a matter Navin? feeling different again?

For those of you that have been around me for extended periods of time, you know that my favorite movie of all times is The Jerk - old movie with Steve Martin and a million other people.  And if you've seen the movie, then you understand the title of my post.

My brother was here for a week with his girlfriend and they left on Saturday and I'm saaaad and I feel all goofy.  They had the best time EVER - and I had an awesome time with them - and they bought more stuff than I have bought in my full 2 years! I hope they go home and talk so much about their trip that other people decide to come visit. This country is just amazing.  After my birthday party in Nairobi - David and Ali went on safari to Amboseli and saw a million elephants and some cheetahs, which is awesome. Then, they came back to Nairobi for one night and then we took off for the coast at like 5am the next day (Thursday). I basically laid around on the beach the entire 2.5 days.  They did scuba diving, which is way more stressful than what I'm about. (I tried scuba and it wasn't for me...something about claustrophobia.I wrote about my experience here). At the coast here, a fresh scuba learner can basically do pool work in the morning and then have a first dive in the afternoon - it's a crash course.

Here's a photo recap:

Nerd Alert! David and Ali being funny - But I did give them a hard time about using their neck pillows on a 45 minute flight to the beach. 

I took the shopaholics to the Acamba wood carving co-op when we arrived in Mombasa. Most people go to the gift shop where all the items are dusted off and displayed all nice - But two years ago, one of my taxi drivers told me about the manufacturers warehouse. Same stuff for sale except WAY more of it and it just needs a good dusting. Its like half the price. It's where people come to buy stuff to pedal.

No one better be smoking in this joint.

I was sweating my cajones off.  David and Ali bought a forest worth of stuff there. They bought 2 large duffel bags to get their stuff back to Nairobi! Love those two - They appreciate the hand crafted stuff and they did their part in supporting the local economy ;-)

We went to dinner one night at Forty Theives beach bar and grill

I showed them the Ali Barbours Cave Restaurant. I've never eaten there - it's a little on the fancy side for me and at the beach I'd rather be by the ocean not underground. But it is cool if you have never seen it.  This is a view of the bar from the street level entrance. It's a restaurant that is actually built in a natural cavern.

Here you can see the restaurant. That opening at the top is the street level.

I took them to Sails restaurant - The best ever.

Perfection

Lovebirds

David did a couple of dives and Ali spent the morning in the pool learning scuba with Pedro and then got to actually do a dive in the ocean! Here they are walking out for their dive.

We bought some kikoys and kangas

Ali found a way to continue her shopping on the beach. (just giving you a hard time Ali - I know I started it)

I bought this awesome kikoy with a towel attached. Never saw these before.

This was the only thing I bought at Akamba. I have way too many masks but this one was cheap and I liked it.

 Then we flew back to Nairobi and David and Ali caught their next flight to Dubai (and then onto Dallas) and I caught my taxi home ;-(. We had an awesome time. AND YOU COULD TOO! If you visited Kenya ;-)

DIY Home Gym - Kenya Style

So my fridge has been broken for about 4 days. It's made cooking and eating at home a bit tricky.  Try making an entire meal with stuff from your pantry..... Although to many the food in my pantry would be a luxury - no reason to complain really.

Actually I've been eating a lot of eggs and oatmeal during the fridge down time. Oh that reminds me so apparently eggs don't need to be refrigerated if you are going to use them within like 4 days or so.  Sounds nuts right?  I thought so too - but in the stores here, eggs are not refrigerated so I looked it up online. Apparently egg shells are a special supa dupa force-field against bacteria and other bad stuff. I still keep them in the fridge just cause I'd rather be safe than sorry if the force field has a crack and I dont know it.

Anyways, some guys came and fixed the fridge today - they took the whole thing apart and some how got it working with just like 2 tools - a hammer and a blow dryer. so freaking resourceful in these parts!

Speaking of resourceful...I meant to show you photos of the most amazing DIY home gym ever.  Dominic is our friend that works at Kenyaways Kite Village - the place we stay at the coast. There are some staff quarters by the house and Dominic wanted to show us the gym he put together there.  Him and I talk about working out a lot - it's his favorite topic...and sort of mine too - so we enjoy each other. He hasn't really been exposed to a much - he's very simple and quiet but when you start talking about working out - he get's pretty excited.  I show him body weight moves from all my little DVDs and bodyrock.com - and he goes on long runs with Sergio - the guy is OBSESSED with working out. It's seriously what he lives for. He told me "Lenna, if I don't do work out one day, I am very sad".  So, this other guy Alex, took us over to see Dominics gym:

He filled the bottom of 5 gallon water jugs with concrete to make one barbell and used concrete in some mold for the other.  The bench was just made of wood.

and a couple of free weights

It's so amazing to me what we could all do if we knew buying something wasn't an option. It's kind of awesome.  It's like my DIY bosu balls made from maize bags! Listen, I dont want to make it sound like this is the only work out equipment you find in Kenya - There are a number of modern gyms in Nairobi and other big cities in Kenya - not as many as we have in the US but modern gym exist here  - but if you are just a normal everyday guy like Dominic, without anywhere near the kind of money that the gyms out here cost ($70 per month!) it's pretty amazing that you can use your hands and some raw materials and throw something like this together. Impressive.

Some of the staff's families live there and there were lots of kids hanging around since there was no school that day

The baby on the little girls back was so cute but was not so into us ..the other kids were like freaking out and everyone wanted to be up in the camera.

The kid with the orange shirt had the cutest face with the funniest expression. Real cutie.

Love how kids out here are so together - i mean they all take care of each other. It's such a great thing. They are raised to take care of each other from a very very early age. There are like 5 and 6 year olds taking care of the baby.

They were showing us their "kitchen area". You know, these 4 days without a fridge, I just kept thinking the whole time that so much of the world doesn't have fridges - they just cook over an open flame exactly what they have and they eat it. The same thing every day. Like here - they cook up some greens and some ugali and they'll maybe save it in a pot if there is anything left. But if you can afford milk, you buy it that day and drink it. That is IF you can afford it. Most people that dont have fridges can't afford daily milk either -

The kitchen.

Okay, that's it! Let me know if you have any ideas for resourceful DIY gym equipment  - I'm without a gym right now so I'm trying to mix it up as much as possible.

Beach Trip with Mume

(Sergio will here forth be referred to as Mume - Swahili for husband)

There we were last Monday night -  finishing our packing for the beach and about to go to bed when I decided to check our ticket print out for the departure time..WHICH WAS 8am MONDAY MORNING! Meaning, we missed the flight to the beach by about oh 16 hours. Not sure what I was thinking...I really thought I booked that flight for Tuesday morning. Damn! So I found myself on the phone with Kenya Airways at 11pm trying to get a flight for us the next morning. She rebooked us and told me it would be $80 extra per person..but no where along the way did anyone actually make us pay so that was sort of awesome.

The beach was awesome. We had the best time just doing nothing - well, I did nothing - sergio did scuba.  My big thing is hunting for coral and shells on the beach. I could do it for hours. You can find huge chunks of DEAD coral (promise I'm not collecting the stuff still alive).
There was  hardly a soul anywhere to be seen. I love it like that. We stay at the same place each time so we know all the staff which also makes it a special place for us. My mom went there when she came to visit too and they always ask about her and it's just a nice little home away from home and it's about $80 per night. If you come to Kenya and go to the coast - stay here! Here's some photos of our beach weekend and our favorite little hideaway:

Living room

Swahili style bathroom

Our balcony area

awesome bathroom...love the swahili design and decor

The room we moved to on the 3rd night

the lounge

My artistic shot of my Mume

Me, trying to be cute.

Sergio with Dominic and Alex - staff at Kennaways. Love those guys.

Other things we did included getting daily hour massages for $10 and....:

We rode in matatus - public buses...oh we are just nuts (sarcastic)

we saw a lot of monkeys - these are colubus - they are so cool looking ..long black and white hair. They try to steal your food

 

For our anniversary night, we went to dinner next door to the most amazing luxury resort - Almanara. The place looks like something transported from Dubai - the restaurant there is called Sails. It's amazing and about the cost of long john silvers for the quality of a 5 star restaurant. Here are some photos of our dinner there and the rest of this amazing place:

This was actually a photo we took the night before...but i can't find a photo of us that exact night. I had such a great time with my Mume.

Seafood Platter from Sails Restaurant. Lobster, Tilapia, calimari, prawn, salad, potatos ...all for $18. I'm telling you, come to Kenya.

Photo of the villas at Almanara - these places are nuts. I got invited in once when a friend of a friends family came from the US during Thanksgiving and stayed here - it's like a 3 story Arabian palace with a full-time chef, butler, waiters and a roof top lounge. NUTS.

Sails Restaurant

The Pool there

The Diani Beach. It really does look like this.

 Listen, I know Kenya is far away (17 hours by flight) and the tickets are a bit expensive ($1100 - $1600) - but all of you reading should really really make it Kenya once in your life. Despite the cost of getting here, once you arrive things are very affordable (beer is $1.50, wine is $3.00/glass- enough said)  and there  are soooo many incredible things see and experience.  This country is just breathtaking, from the coast to the game parks to the mountains. I guarantee you will spend more money visiting Europe and you won't see half the amazing sights that you can see here in Kenya.  It is a life changing type of experience.  COME TO KENYA!

Sergio's birthday blow-out weekend

In preparation for the beach weekend, I decided to buy a big hat so that I can try to save myself from the leather coating that is growing over my skin ..it's starting to get bad early people.
So, I went to the Masai Market, where the best vendors come out and sell their stuff a different locations on different days of the week. Here are the ones I tried on:

Mmmm. this is like big-bo-peep

This will work!

hat as prop - the options are endless!

hat on

flied lice anyone?

 The beach was a good old time - apart from the scuba adventure, which I promise not to discuss in this post. You can read about that by clicking here.  The first night we arrived, it was just Sergio and I (and my hat). We had a nice dinner on the balcony area of our little house apartment. It was so close to the restaurant that the waiter just served us right there. We had wine and cheese and delicious seafood and more wine - enough to get giggly then we called it a night since it's better to not be hungover for early morning scuba.

Here is a quick overview and photo journal of highlights from the rest of the weekend:

• Lenna freaking out at scuba lessons and barfing overboard (oh crap i swore I wouldn't talk about it!)
• NO PHOTO
•  Sergio and Scott having a good time scubaing and wearing wetsuits

• Lenna reading the book Friday Night Lights on the beach - the only book I have access to that I have not read. It's actually pretty good - I didn't think I'd be interested - but I related a lot to it having gone to high school in Kansas where our football team won STATE CHAMPS my senior year (fly Eagles...fly...)

•  Eating the BEST coriander and feta samosas I've ever had for lunch next door (No Photo)
• Going to dinner at 40 Thieves beach bar and ordering the 3rd Lobster I've ever eaten - 750 grams. It was GIANT and DELICIOUS and half the price of lobster at home.  (No Photo)
• Trying our best to make smores over a candle back at our apartment after dinner

• Sweating to death from my morning torture run on Sunday - 6 miles in the most humid heat EVER..but the road was flat and nice. One would think that I swam 6 miles by the look of it when I was done - I passed a few Masai on my run (there are a ton of them around the coast)...I think they wanted to recruit me - pretty sure women that can get that sweaty and run long distances are attractive and useful for them...and they probably picked up on my scent.

I could literally ring out my clothing after the run - not unusual for me in general and you probably don't even need to know this.

•  We had an AMAZING dinner Sunday night (birthday eve) at the Al Manara Hotel next door. It's more like a collection of villas. Each unit is around $2000 per night and sleep 8. They are large villas that are all decked out in incredible Swahili/arabesque style decor - They have A/C, flat screen TV, etc and they come with your own staff of people. We spent Thanksgiving dinner there last year because Scott's friend from DC was visiting Kenya with her whole family - They rented the place for a couple nights - I mean LUXURY...crazy levels of luxury. Since we were staying at our little humble abode next door their family invited us over for Thanksgiving meal there. The staff made an amazing Turkey dinner for us - it was awesome. So, for this trip we walked over to their restaurant for dinner. Surprisingly the prices were amazing! We all ordered seafood platters - It was CRAZY GOOD - for um, don't hate - $16.  We had shrimp, calamari, lobster, and fish.  HEAVEN.

sideways seafood platter

The staff made a little cake for Sergio and sang "Happy BirSdays tu yuuuuuu"

Us

•  Birthday MONDAY -  The guys did their scuba, I lounged, then we all met up at the bar on the beach afterwards for some birthday cake. I brought a better crocker mix and frosting with me and asked the chef to cook it up for when they got back from scuba. Um, I think having a cake mix threw the guy off completely, which was not my intention - i was trying to keep it simple.  Add a little oil, add a little water, a couple of eggs and voila.  But I think with shotty English, he probably thought the instructions said, "once the cake is done take it and let a rat gnaw on one side so that it's not quite a circle, then take some sandpaper and sand the cake ...after you put the frosting on it...then write the name Sergio so big that you have to break it into 2 lines so that everyone knows who is the recipient of the cake".  Because this is what it looked like:

but it tasted damn good - I think he actually cooked the frosting INTO the cake - it was a gooey mess. But why should I expect him to know how to deal with mixes and pre-made frosting. He'd never seen the likes of it in his life.  We couldn't get the candles to light since we were right at the beach and the wind was nuts.  But it was a nice cake and we shared it with all the staff and Pedro and his wife Tracy (scuba folks) and thanked the chef with a big piece for himself (not that he didn't already take a huge piece by the looks of the thing!! haha)

•  Then, the BIG finale -birthday Hibachi on the BEACH before heading to the airport. I found this resort place down the road that advertised Hibachi on the beach. So i called the week before to ask about pricing, etc. They said it was actually closed down since it was low season. But I managed to get the head chef on the phone, who is from Nairobi. He said that since we were coming ALL that way ( 45 minute flight??) that he wanted to help. So, he said, weather permitting, he'll set it up for us. I called him the day before and committed to being there- he bought the stuff and we made it happen!  It was amazing! He assigned some staff and a chef , cleaned off the hibachi table, set it all nice, and hosted us the whole evening - and he made it all happen in the amount of time we had before we needed to leave. It was over the top. Just Sergio, me, and Scott sitting out in this beautiful place. Sergio was really happy and pretty much admitted that it was the best birthday so far.  It's one thing i love about Africa. Things can be accommodated for you..things aren't so strict. I mean, I did hook him up with a little buksheesh for being so cool...but still, it's the African hospitality. I love it.

Look how prettttttyyyyy

View from the hibachi table

Three Amigos go Japanese

It was perfect timing - We arriving when the sun was still up to enjoy the beach view and the sun was setting as we wrapped up.

Then we took our taxi straight to the airport and got home right about midnight..the close of Sergio's birthday.  Happy BIRTHDAY BYU! XOXO