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Dingy Fishing

Kenya Safari Holidays Watamu,Kenya,East Africa

Kenya Diving & Fishing Safaris| Hotel Accommodation| Wildlife Safaris Watamu, Kenya, East Africa.

After Gedi, WATAMU can seem a bit superficial, consisting simply of a small agglomeration of hotels, a strip of beachfront private homes, a compact village shaded by coconut trees, and the beach. One or two big hotels cater to all-inclusive holidaymakers, but there are good reasons to come here if you're traveling independently or on a budget, including the superb marine park, some interesting wildlife initiatives, youthful nightlife (sporadically) and the beautiful beach itself.Watamu is comfortable with tourists, and despite tourisms high profile, theres an easier-going atmosphere here than in Diani, Malindi or Mombasa's north coast. As most of the beach is within the marine park, KWS regulations tend to be more strictly enforced to keep hawkers away.

This is an exceptional shoreline, with three stunning bays-Watamu Bay, the Blue Lagoon and Turtle Bay-separated by raised coral cliffs and dotted with tiny, sculpted coral islets.Watamu is good for diving- and a good place to get qualified ,with  several diving schools-and out in the Watamu Marine National Park, when the visibility is good, the submerged crags of living coral gardens and their swirls of brilliant fish can still seem magically vivid, although like elsewhere they are suffering from contact damage and the rise in sea temperature.

Watamu Village is weird mixture of unhurried fishing community and Europhile souvenir centre. The traditional rubs elbows with the pseudo-hip; Samburu and Masai Morani in full ochred splendor stand around waiting for photographers; and Jamia Mosque has a notice that reads "All Muslims are Well Come for Prayers. No Trespass. By Management.

Arrival & Information

Getting to Watamu is easy, with frequent matatus making the run from Malindi.Buses and matatus traveling the coast highway will drop you at the Gedi junction, leaving you to walk, hitch a lift, wait for a local matatu,or take a cab for the last,dead-straight,6km.Coming into Watamu itself, you pass the post office before reaching the beach road T-junction, along which matatus scud up and down all the time. Just north of the junction, if you continue up the beach road a little way past the turning for the supermarket, a road off to the right takes you into the village (KCB bank, ATM, is on the left).

Bicycle rental is offered by anumber of outlets, especially in high season when it gets quite competitive, depending on season and number days. Bikes are a great way of getting to know Watamu, with the Gedi ruins and anywhere on the beach road easily reachable in thirty minutes or so. You can charter a flight from Lamu to Watamu, Mombasa to Watamu, Nairobi to Watamu, Ukunda to Watamu or take a scheduled flight out of Nairobi to Malindi which is the airport serving Watamu or even take  a scheduled flight Nairobi to Mombasa and drive to Watamu as you sight seeing the North Coast of Mombasa,Kilifi to Watamu.There are scheduled flights daily from Mombasa via Ukunda and Malindi to Masai Mara daily but not a minimum of 5 seats will be required to enable a scheduled flight pick you or drop you in Malindi orelse you drive to Mombasa for your flight. Private air taxis for 1 person,2 people,3 people and upto  30 people is available at Malindi airport,Lamu aiport,Mombasa airport,Ukunda airport for scenic safaris, sight seeing safaris, filming safaris, aerial survey & photography flights along the coastal line and into national parks and national reserves at the Coast.

Hotel Accommodation Watamu

There's a variety of accommodation in the village itself-everything from humble and uninviting B&Ls to a pleasant holiday hotel. The very central places risk being loud at night, thanks to nearby nightclubs.

Watamus beach hotels and lodgings are a mixed bag. Several focus on water sports, with diving and game fishing the main activities. The big fishing competition in the first or second week of March can make accommodation scarce, but May and June usually see excellent low-season rates.Matatus usually only go as far south as Turtle Bay, where piki-pikis or boda –bodas can be hired to take you further south. It is possible to camp at Ocean Sports.

Village Accommodation

Ascot Residence Village centre.Good-value, two –room studios (sleeping four), with nets and fans but no air condition, and a large, dolphin-shaped pool. The pleasant, breezy public areas get fairly lively in high season. Most guests are Italian.

Dante. On the way down the hill into the Village .Small, but homely self contained rooms with fan, but not much else. Rates are competitive and pocket friendly.

Malon Guest House. On the way down the hill into the village.Friendly, but a bit dark and dingy and the eight self contained rooms, with nets and fans, aren't very clean.

Marijani Holiday Resort North of the village.Friendly, informal German-run place, with fifteen, comfortable and very good-value rooms (four-poster beds, nets, fans, fridges, spotless bathrooms) in two stylish houses. All rooms have fridges, some have kitchens.

Villa Veronika on the way down the hill into the village. Stylish B&L, with local women and children always milling around, with very acceptable, fresh, bright rooms, some self contained, with nets and fans, around a courtyard. Very clean, with a shady, intimate, almost Mediterranean feel.

Beach Hotels & Other Accommodation

The following listings are arranged from North to South. Unless otherwise noted, they are all on the beach.

Barracuda Inn .Unusual hotel with impressive makuti-vaulted reception, well worth considering for its location on the shore of the Blue Lagoon, and great views. Ground-floor rooms are more spacious-all have air condition-and there are tennis courts and pool.

Ocean Sports slightly macho place, who reputation ("Open shorts") has sailed before it for years. During holiday times it swarms with young Anglo-Kenyans doing their own thing, but the staff is great, as is the food, and its right on the beach. All 44 rooms have nets, fans,a/c and safes and pleasantly rustic bathrooms, but foam mattresses on the beds is disappointing.Tennis, squash,two pools.PADI diving school. Adjoining campsite.

Hemingways. From October to April, landing big fish is high on the agenda here, but this is a really good, mainstream hotel where the atmosphere tends towards the formal and there's nothing much for children-or non-fishing adults. Superior rooms in the new wing are very nice, large with huge beds, a/c and sea views, but no TVs. Two pools.

Turtle Bay Beach Club .Expertly run, all-inclusive holiday club, full of happy holidaymakers, mainly from the UK. Lots of do, lots of eat, and plenty of cheap booze. The gardens are cramped, but facilities include twopols, tennis and PADI diving and windsurfing schools and free bicycles and water sports. Staff and management actively participate in local community and environment initiatives-they have a silver rating from Ecotourism Kenya.

Bustan Ya Eden west of the road, not on thebeach.Plain, tidy, comfortable, s/c, chalet-style rooms, with fans and nets, attached to a locally renowned bar-restaurant, with reasonably priced seafood and African dishes.

Villas Watamu Resort 400m west of the road.A Mediterranean-style self-catering villa complex with a dramatic line in verandas and a huge pool, as well as a restaurant .The beach is 15-minute walk, but security is good (half the villas are occupied by local tourist police) and the rates, for spacious a/c accommodation with fully equipped kitchens, are very reasonable.

Mwamba Field Studies Centre.Formely Mrs. Simpsons, this guest-house is now run by the Christian conservation group A Rocha, though it is open to all and is only evangelical about the environment. They have 14 beds in various clean, simple s/c rooms with nets, and camping pitches .Snorkeling gear, bird walks, and turtle-watching are all available and its close to the nearby deserted beach. Staying is on Full board basis only, including for campers, and very good value.

Watamu Marine National park

The Watamu Marine National Park stretches along the coast from the Blue Lagoon to Mida Creek. Its total exclusion zone for fishermen has not been greeted with rhapsody all round. On the other hand, tourists come in large numbers every year and Watamu hasn't gone far wrong in identifying their needs. This is a highly rated Snorkeling and diving territory, where the reef is reasonably close to shore, still mostly in good condition and the water crystal clear in the right season. Harmless whale sharks visit the area regularly, a highlight for the diver.

If you've never taken a swim before in a shoal of coral fish, the spectacle can be breathtaking: every conceivable combination of colour and shape-and a few inconceivable ones-is represented. The ostentatious dazzle of some of them, especially the absurd parrot fish, can be simply hilarious. The most common destination is the "coral gardens", a kilometer or two offshore, where the boat drifts, suspended in 5 to 6m of scintillatingly clear water.Here, over a group of giant coral heads, where fish naturally congregate, you enter the unusual park. If you dive to the sea floor, you'll get an intense experience of sharing the undersea world with the fish and the coral. Watch out for the small, harmless octopuses that stay motionless until disturbed and then jet themselves across the sea bed-they're brilliant masters of disguise, altering their form and colour to match their surroundings. If such adventures aren't your forte, the glass bottoms of the boats provide an alternative view-but its often a rather obscure and narrow one.

For visits to the park, Ocean Sports and Hemingway's both run glass-bottom boat snorkeling trips. Otherwise, you'll have to haggle with the boatmen along the beach, or outside the park headquarters and tickets office down at the south end of the Watamu road at Temple Point. Expect to pay a reasonable price per person without park entry fees, for a three-hour trip in a glass-bottomed boat combining the coral gardens with, at high tide, a trip along Mida Creek. Masks, snorkels and sometimes fins are provided, but remember to take plenty of sun cream and a T-shirt.

Other Activities & Excursions In Watamu

Watamus beach is beautiful, with its coral outcrop islands within swimming distance of the hotel gardens. Although they mostly started as fishing and diving centres, many of the hotels are getting involved with community and environmental projects and channel tourist excursion money into the local economy.

Diving

From October to March, when the water is clearest, the diving possibilities are extensive. Turtle Reef, a few hundred metres offshore, offers big shoals of surgeon and parrot fish around high coral heads. Further out, a popular site is Moray Reef site, where at least one, very large moray eel has become used to visiting divers. Further north, a good spot for beginners is the shallow Drummers Reef site, where you can see blue-spotted rays, napoleon wrasse and scorpion fish, and, fairly often on the; landward side, turtles. There are three dive centres at Watamu, the best plan is probably to visit all of them and make your own assessment of their competence and suitability. Remember that marine park fees are extra charged per day per person paid at KWS Marine Park office at the end of the beach road, or to your operator.

If you're a qualified diver, each dive will cost at a reduced rate including equipment, less with your own equipment. There are reductions if you book a series of dives, and small supplements for night-and –wreck-dives. If you haven't dived for a while, you should be asked to do a check-out dive (usually free) or a one-day refresher. If you're a beginner, you can do either a one-day, one-dive course or opt for PADI course of four dives over five days-leading to Open Water certification-for a fee which is competitive.

Fishing

The game-fishing season runs from July to mid –April (there is no legal season as such, but a few boats go out in the rough seas between May and July, with the main season for Billfish-those with spikes on their snouts, including sailfish and black, striped and blue marlin-roughly November to Mid-March .other species commonly hooked include wahoo, kingfish, dorado, bonito, giant trivially and various sharks, including some big tiger sharks and bull sharks. If you're fishing between July and October ,before the wind swings round, its good to be aware that conditions can be rough-its not for the fainthearted .While some fish  are caught for eating and invariably killed and sold by the crew (yellow fin tuna particularly),all captains have a policy of tag-and –release for sharks and billfish. The fish are tagged for migration research, and a fee is paid for delivery of tags from recaptured fish.

The biggest sea-fishing centre in Watamu is Hemingway's; with trips based on 4 people for a day .Alternatively, the following, highly recommended, Watamu-based independent boat owners offer a days fishing at competitive rates, usually for a group of four or five, with lunch and drinks included.Theyre normally prepared to be a little more flexible than Hemingway's on the question of what time you have to be back on shore.

Groupers, Dolphins & Whale Sharks

At the entrance to Mida Creek is a famous group of caves. Known as the "Big Three Caves", these are the meeting place of a school of giant groupers, or rock cod, that once numbered only three but are now many more. Up to two metres long and weighing more than 300kg (660 pounds), these are placid, stationary monsters –thankfully enough, for anyone intrepid enough to dive down a few metres for a closer look. The site is a good kilometer offshore and there are some moderate currents, so boat trips normally only take place at the turn of neap high tides, when visibility, depth and currents give the optimum conditions. You need a permit from the park warden to visit the Big Three Caves, which is usually given freely. Less predictable sea excursions are also arranged in quest of dolphins and whale sharks. These are fairly frequently seen offshore, but it's become accepted practice to pay only a nominal charge for the trip if you're unsuccessful. Check it out before signing up (with any of the diver operators.

Bio-Ken Reptile Park

About 1.3km north of the Gedi junction is a superb little reptile park, Bio-Ken (daily 10am –noon & 2-5 pm, which breeds green and black mambas for anti-venom, and houses a large collection of snakes, plus a few tortoises and a token crocodile. It's an interesting visit, and you'll be guided round by someone who actually knows a bit about reptiles-one of staff is a silver –level safari guide.

Watamu Turtle Watch

Among environmental initiatives, one in which many hotels participate, and which individual tourists can contribute to,is Watamu Turtle Watch: Mon –Sat 9.30ma-12.30pm,2-4.30pm),  a project to protect the eggs of threatened marine turtles from poaching by paying  local people to guard nests. The same group also pays fishermen to hand in turtles that have  got ensnared in fishing nets for treatment of their injuries and release back into the sea-anything from eight hundred to a thousand turtles every year. The office and information  centre has some shady quarantine pools where you can usually "meet" recovering turtles.

August brings lots of sea grass to Watamu, and turtles mate and lay in the same month. The eggs, which are buried  en masse on the beach in pits dug, by the females with their flippers,and then covered in sand, take 60 and 75 days  to incubate, so October and November are  commonly the months when nests usually hatch. Watamus turtles are mostly the green and hawksbill species. Despite extensive research and observation, it is still not known where the babies go after hatching. What is clear is  that only one in a thousand survives to maturity.

Visitors can sponsor a turtle for release or a nest for guarding (you can see the nest sites if you walk down the Watamu peninsula towards Temple Point).Turtle Watch is informed when nests that are being guarded start to hatch, so, if you contact them, you may be able to go and see the baby turtles scuttling down the sand like tiny clockwork toys.Mwamba Field Studies Centre is a good place to be based if you don't want to miss anything.

About the Author

Anthony Mmeri is the Editor and Tours Director at Wings Over Africa Safaris. 
This is a Tours & Travel Company that specializes on Kenya  Diving & Fishing Safaris| Hotel Accommodation| Wildlife Safaris Watamu,Kenya,East Africa. The website has guided thousands of travelers to achieve their dream holiday. For more information and guidance, visit the site at http:// / www.wingsoverafrica-aviation.com/index.php/services/tourist-flights.html

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