Day 141-147 NEW YEAR IN LAMU Getting on a plane at Wilson Airport on our way to Lamu seemed an alien experience to us having spent the past five months driving to Kenya. As did staying in a hotel...with a real bed and a shower! This was to be our first hotel room since Cairo... We stayed at Petleys Inn in Lamu Town - a fascinating fishing town with a maze of narrow streets and beautiful carved doorways. The island is predominantly Muslim and in fact lies only thirty miles from the Somali border. The streets are filled with women shrouded in black burkas and men dressed in long white shirts with white skull caps. The town has understandably retreated into a stricter version of Islam in reaction to the western tourists that visit. However, we were humoured to watch the local Muslim women struggling to keep their burkas and headdresses on in the island's strong afternoon winds - Lamu's equivalent of a Marilyn Monroe moment. Petley's unsurprisingly fitted into our "Seen Better Days" category but it had a great view over the quay where fishermen brought in their catch and boats crammed with goats came over from the mainland. There was plenty to look at and we had a very relaxing time fitting into the laid back Lamu way of life. Lamu is so laid back that the whole island was almost horizontal, which suited us fine...there was no choice but to go with the flow. Our New Year's Eve was spent in a beach side restaurant eating crab, lobster, shark and barracuda washed down with a few sneaky Tusker beers we were able to buy from the one bar in the town! The only drink on the island to be served in a pint glass seemed to be freshly squeezed mango juice...the beers had to come in bottles in the black plastic bags. We were lucky to stumble on probably the most energetic day of the whole islands calendar. Each year Peponi's Hotel on Shela beach sponsors a dhow boat race on New Years day. After numerous laps around the bay the winning Dhow crossed the finishing line to carnival-like celebrations. The winning team were cheering so much that the Captain instantly capsized the boat as the beach erupted in celebration. No one seemed to mind, expect perhaps for the owner of the sunken dhow. The scene was more like the winning celebrations of a world cup football team - very loud and completely infectious. After New Year's Day Gareth and Jilly had booked themselves into Kipungani, a 'Robinson Crusoe' island resort for the final few nights of their trip and we joined them for lunch one day. It was a lovely place and brought back memories of our lovely stay on Zanzibar for our honeymoon...how different our style of travelling is now! After five days of doing very little we flew back to Nairobi - where we had a view of Mt Kilimanjaro peaking above the clouds on our left and Mt Kenya peak on our right as the sun was setting. Having reached half way through our journey we are already looking forward to travelling further south towards Cape Town. In Nairobi we stayed a night with Mike Bristow at his lovely house in Karen then said our goodbyes to Mum and Dad/Jilly and Gareth at the airport the following day. Mike kindly gave us the use of his driver for the day to help us track down our new fuel tank before we hit the road again. We found it, along with other much needed parts, at Impala Autos in the Industrial Area of Nairobi. It has been a fantastic three weeks of touring Kenya together with Gareth and Jilly, seeing all parts of the country and such a variety of landscapes and cultures. They really entered into the 'sprit of our trip', mucking in with all the cleaning, washing and car maintenance...and kept us very well stocked with wine boxes and 'luxurious' snacks that our budget wouldn't normally stretch to (muesli, cashew nuts and bacon!). We're really going to miss them...but we're now at the beginning of a new leg to our trip - going slightly off track by going west to Uganda then Rwanda and back to Tanzania for the end of January when we will visit the Amani Children's Home. From there it will be a case of heading south to Malawi, Zambia, Botswana, Namibia and finally South Africa... So it's 19 countries and 13,000 miles down ...now only 8 more countries and roughly 10,000 miles to go! HAPPY NEW YEAR to everyone, thank you for all your Christmas messages and we'll be in touch soon xx