There’s just something about a lager at sunset.
As we headed for Pate Island on the dhow, the traditional sailing boat ubiquitous on the East African coast, the captain opened my Tusker, a Kenyan beer, and passed around beef and vegetarian samosas. I looked back at big overstuffed white pillows, ate the savory treats and thought that life was always better with a sunset.
Just half an hour earlier at Manda Bay, the elegant rustic resort on Manda Island where we were staying, I had put on the colorful plaid kikoy wrap I’d bought the day before and my partner had put on his bathing suit so we could go out into the Indian Ocean and climb in the dhow, which comfortably carried the captain, his mate, and the two of us.
Dhows have been plying the Indian Ocean for thousands of years, their triangular sails creating distinctive silhouettes. Constructed from woods such as teak and mahogany, the boats range in size from small fishing boats to spacious versions over 100 feet long.
As for Manda Bay, Italian musician Bruno Brighetti originally opened it in the 1960s as the Blue Safari Club. It was sold to Kenyans more than two decades ago. Now the thatched bungalows, with wooden swing beds on the verandas, line a vast, private sandy beach (beachfront rooms are $540 a night for a single).
It takes about an hour to fly from Nairobi to Manda Island’s tiny airport, and then porters take your bags to the dock for a 30-minute boat ride to the resort on the island’s north coast. Everyone from wealthy South African tech executives to members of the British aristocracy have stayed here over the years. (Lady Viola Grosvenor, a sister of the Duke of Westminster—who owns much of London’s Mayfair neighborhood—married the Kenyan owners’ son in 2022, and part of their wedding celebrations took place at Manda Bay.)
Mention a trip to Kenya and most people probably think ‘safari’. But staying at Manda Bay has a completely different atmosphere. In addition to dhow cruises around the mangrove-filled archipelago – which includes Manda Island, Lamu Island, Pate Island and the smaller islands of Kiwayu and Manda Toto – there are days spent relaxing by the pool. snorkeling at a nearby reef; day trips to Lamu town and Shela village, both on Lamu Island. sailboats and kayaks to borrow. and offers for coastal and deep-sea fishing expeditions.
Besides fishing, we had done just about everything else during our week here when we decided to take a sunset cruise. During it, we asked to visit Pate Island, home to the ruins of Shanga village, which archaeologists say was first established in the eighth century.
The boat captain explained to us that the island is more accessible at low tide, which we would miss. Moreover, by the time we arrived, the sun would have set and finding the village in the dark would be very difficult.
But as we sailed close by, he pointed out some features and regaled us with stories about the island. One was the story of a Chinese ship, filled with goods, including porcelain, that was wrecked off the coast of Pate in 1400. Descendants of the survivors are said to still inhabit parts of the island, and silversmiths in the town of Lamu they insist that the porcelain set in their necklaces and earrings are fragments that still wash ashore today.
As we watched the pinks and oranges of the sunset dance across the changing blue sky, we admitted that we weren’t sorry to miss the Shanga site because we had already seen some ruins the night before.
On the way to a hilltop sunset on the resort property, our guide, a student whose paternal great-grandfather was the famous Kenyan paleontologist Louis Leakey, had taken us past the ruins of Manda City, a settlement said to was founded in the ninth century. (There are historical ruins up and down this archipelago of the Swahili coast, including the village of Takwa, on the south side of the island.)
The city of Manda is now filled with the ruins of stone and plaster buildings, including a mosque’s ornate mihrab, the alcove in the wall that points in the direction of Mecca. In the 1960s, archaeologists found that some of the structures included bricks that were likely brought to the area as ballast on ships from Oman.
Walking around the ruins covered in overgrown prickly pear, not far from what our guide said was a 1,000-year-old baobab tree, I imagined what this city was like in its heyday in the 13th century, when some 3,500 people are believed to have lived there.
This stay at Manda Bay was my third trip to the archipelago — and my second time traversing its waters by dhow. On my first visit here in 2019, I stayed at the Italian-owned Majlis Resort, a property on Manda Island designed in the Swahili architectural language and featuring elaborately carved wooden doors and beds (a junior suite starts at about $530 a night, depending on time).
I had taken a day cruise on the hotel’s dhow and had been fascinated to watch the junior captain climb a wooden part of the mast to raise the sail, which had a female portrait painted on one side, and watch as it unfurled and immediately caught a gust of wind. As I lay on the bow of the boat – it had red cushions – we passed happy fishermen in painted boats showing off their catches.
After rounding the southernmost tip of Lamu Island, we stopped at a secluded beach where I snorkeled and then had a seafood lunch on a beach with a handful of luxury holiday villas. Since the area first became popular with the expat crowd in the 1960s, Princess Caroline of Monaco, Sting, actor Dominic West, Dutch director Anton Corbijn and make-up entrepreneur Charlotte Tilbury have all owned or rented properties in island.
After lunch, we spent the afternoon sailing the rest of the island, passing the small, peaceful fishing village of Matondoni, which is known as a dhow-making center and where both dhows I’ve been on were built. Soon enough, as we approached the town of Lamu, our tranquility was interrupted by the bustle of boats dropping off supplies and passengers at the docks and local children jumping into the water for a late afternoon swim.
The day before, the hotel had arranged a guide for my walking tour of Lamu town. This community of about 15,000 is the best preserved of the Swahili towns along the East African coast and includes an Old Town that is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
After visiting the Lamu Museum and Donkey Sanctuary (which cares for donkeys that are sick or too old to work), we headed through the maze of alleyways with shops selling everything from local textiles to kiti cha jeuri chairs, wooden paneled seats. of woven cord. We ended our tour in the small market square, where fruit and vegetable vendors hawked fresh mangoes and avocados, while local men in bright sarongs and bowler hats caught up on the day’s gossip.
Shela, a small village in Lamu, is less hectic than Lamu Town and has a cleaner feel, with a number of small art galleries, some upscale boutiques such as Aman, which sells cotton clothing at European prices, and private homes that owned by wealthy Kenyans and foreigners who have been lovingly – and expensively – renovated.
It is also home to the historic Peponi Hotel. Opened in the late 1960s by Wera and Aage Korschen, over the decades this hotel has developed something of a bohemian reputation, and at cocktail hour it’s the place to see and be seen. (After my dhow excursion, I enjoyed a cocktail called dawa — Swahili for medicine — made with vodka, honey and lime.) Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall visited in the 1970s, and since then Kate Moss, Sienna Miller and the Obamas were among those who came for a visit.
On New Year’s Eve each year, the hotel hosts a dhow race that is a social focal point for vacationers and locals alike. The captain of the dhow on my most recent sail told us he came third out of 11 local boats.
We lost the race though, as we were too busy lounging lazily by the pool on wooden swings, watching people go by.
