Paje: If you aren't Kiteboarding you are Probably Wrong

That being said none of us kiteboarded. Maybe I get points for wanting to. Really wanting to. How could you not in Paje? After breakfast which came unexpectedly quickly after the wait for food the night, we swam and hung out and then I decided to take a walk.

Seafood harvester and kite boards

As the morning progressed 10 kiteboarders turned into 20, then 50 then 100s. They eventually looked like bugs. The hazard of this seems to be if a newbie gets out of control as your are wading looking for conch shells.

Paje is the perfect place to learn to kiteboard. We had wondered about why it was known for kiteboarding the night before, however, now it was very clear: the wind was perfect, there is knee deep water for eons, you never have to worry about resetting yourself while trying to swim or float and your instructor can stand in the shallow water with you and talk to you while you are learning to stand, turn and whatever else. It doesn't hurt that it is also absolutely gorgeous.

Walking on the beach was nice (with earphones in without music playing), because no one tried to sell me anything.

On the beach in Paje there are men who are dressed as Masai guys (they might be real?? I don't know. They have the Masai brands on their faces.) that try to sell you Masai goods. ASL engaged one of them in conversation and he told him that they were all brought there buy a company to sell Masai stuff to tourists. Plausible, but still weird to me.

After my walk on the beach I decided to walk out into the ocean as far as I could go. I went (carefully because there are sea urchins and coral and conch shells) for at least a half of a mile before I ran out of time and had to turn around.

I probably made it 2/3 of the way to where the waves were crashing. There were still people farther out farming seaweed.

For the afternoon we had rented a boat to go snorkeling in Upendo at the Blue Lagoon. We had been told this was the best place around. We hopped in a taxi van and drove the 30 minutes up the coast. We were met on the shore by our captain who had a great toothless smile (he just looked happy and I instantly liked him) and spoke very limited English. They only word in over 3 hours that I heard him say in English was "dangerous." This was in reaction to me getting too close to an underwater plant that looked liked a brown fern on the reef.  The beach was even more spectacular than Paje (I promise I will upload pictures soon. We took pictures for this excursion with a point and shoot camera only because we didn't know if it was safe enough to bring my iphone. I took A's advice that if I was going to worry about it in the boat the whole time while I was snorkeling I should leave it at home. He was correct although I really miss the instant gratification that iPhone pictures provide.).

 Upon arrival at the reef he gave us our snorkels, masks and flippers and in we jumped. He followed immediately after and swam with us. Initially A had trouble with his mask so our captain switched with him. The reef was beautiful and many of the fish were unusual in their coloring and shape. One of the best parts is they were not afraid of us at all (cue The Little Mermaid music). We swam through them and many of them joined us. At one point there were small iridescent fish that changed from blue to green to yellow depending on the light and the waves. They surrounded us and the effect was to make the water sparkle. There were so many beautiful fish. One type that I really liked was yellow with pink and turquoise stripes (I need a waterproof camera). There was a weird not sea horse thing. After a while our captain went back to the boat and got in. We followed. He let me feed the fish with the bread he had brought with us. We reapplied sunscreen and ate turkey jerky. After a while he began talking to us in Swahili. We had no idea what he was saying. Finally another boat got close enough to hear him and they told us he was telling us to get back in the water. So we did accepting that despite 3 applications of 30 SPF a sunburn was probably happening. Because of this I attempted to swim only on my side while also switching from side to side.  I don't think this was successful in accomplishing anything except looking like I didn't know how to swim. The reef was incredible with the added bonus of being with someone who really loves the ocean and has a great eye to find things.

After snorkeling we were starving and unwilling to chance our hotel kitchen for a quick resolution of this so we had the driver drop us off down the beach for a late lunch. Lunch was on the beach and delicious. We got the seafood curry and the Masia meal (think meat kabobs on a skewer with rice and veggies), The curry was a cinnamon curry that was served in a coconut (easy way to make anything fantastic: put it in the shell of a vegetable or fruit.

After lunch we wandered back up the beach and ordered dinner almost immediately (an amazing plan since it was ready over 3 hours later). The rest of the day was reading and hanging out and discovering the amazingness of fresh aloe on a sunburn.

Dinner was followed by learning to play Eucher, a really complex game. The boys won despite tremendous complaining about the rules. "What I can't talk to my friend?" (when asking about the cards the other was holding. Hello, table talk). Playing cards on this trip was really fun and something I don't do enough of when I am at home.