Being a Tourist Again

This morning, I slept in and then continued my touring of Malindi and surrounding areas. Fortunately, I didn't have to go far from my hotel to do it.

This is the Vasco de Gama pillar. It's actually the second pillar he built. He built the first one the first time he landed in Malindi, which I believe was 1597. He then sailed from Malindi to Calcutta in 23 days, established business partnerships, shook hands, etc, and then sailed the reverse journey home to Portugal. When he arrived back in Malindi, he discovered that they had torn down his pillar. So, he built another. I don't know what kept the people who tore down the first from going after the second, but it's still standing today. The point that it's on has been reinforced with concrete and breakers have been put in the water to slow erosion in hopes that it will stay there. This is apparently quite a popular place for school groups to visit; while eating lunch yesterday, we saw three buses of primary school children head out toward the pillar.

Here's a picture of de Gama's route, taken at the Malindi museum. It's too bad the Suez canal wasn't in place back then. It would have saved the Portuguese traders a lot of time and the lives of a lot of men (scurvy was a big problem back in those days).

Also at the museum was this ugly little creature. Okay, it's not exactly little, and it's not exactly real. It's a replica of a Coelacanth, the fish that they thought had been extinct for 20 million years prior to catching one off the coast of South Africa in 1938. Since then, they've found several others up and down the eastern coast of Africa, including one just off Malindi, in 2001 (that's the purpose of the exhibit at the museum). They really don't have a purpose to us, since their meat is supposedly really oily and foul, and nobody intentionally catches them. They just get find them in nets every once in a while when deep sea trawling.

After a lunch at the hotel, I headed out to the Malindi Marine Park. I don't know what I was expecting and why I didn't think this through, but nobody told me that the point was to go snorkeling with the fishes, so I didn't have my swimming suit on. I did still get to see them from the boat, though, including from the glass bottom of the boat, as below.

The hand holding the bread belongs to our boat captain, who, obviously, had his suit and was snorkeling. There were so many fish and it was fun to watch them all attack the pieces of bread we threw in the water, but as anyone who has tried taking pictures of fish knows, it doesn't really project well.

Random update of the neonatal case from yesterday: as per Metsanze's update, the baby is still convulsing, but is still alive. More random updates to follow, I'm sure.

All in all, a pretty low-key day of being a tourist.