Fantastic Africa

I adore Kenya, I adore its scents but above all I adore its people, always ready to give you a smile. This is my second time in Kenya, but it was a unique experience because I had the joy of sharing these beauties with my children, who fell in love with it straight away. I have to say that in this I was helped enormously by a local person whom many people had recommended to me already from Italy and whose name is Zucchero, who is the best Beach Boy and the best tour guide there is in the area, he's serious and very professional. With Zucchero we did some wonderful excursions such as the 2-day safari, the blue safari and other interesting trips.

I have to say that a sore point was the tour operator Alpitour KARAMBOLA, with which you save on travel packages compared to others, but the horrible thing was that the head of the Malindi office told us "KARAMBOLA DOESN'T PROVIDE ASSISTANCE" and where is that ever written? The hotel representative is never seen except when he has to come and pick you up to take you back to the airport, and there as soon as you get off the coach he vanishes like lightning, Mr KATANA. We received assistance both at the hotel and at the airport and for any other need of ours from the on-site representatives, always from EDEN VIAGGI, to whom we really owe a thank you. The hotel where my family and I stayed is the Aquarius Beach Resort, divided into three blocks, Aquarius, Lily Palm and Mapango, very inconvenient for guests whichever block you're put in.

The distance you're obliged to cover to and from the restaurant, to and from the sea, to and from the evening shows is about 450 metres. At the moment, from the Aquarius reception where the restaurant is located — the only buffet one — to reach the Lily Palm or the Mapango or in any case the beach, you go out and walk a stretch of road outside the property, and you reach the Lily Palm, then you walk along a further internal path broken by a private road that opens onto the public road, with no gate at all, and you reach the Mapango where there's a bar and an area next to the pool where the shows are held, and a paid restaurant open to everyone, not only hotel guests, after which you reach the beach, of which only a tiny, very cramped space is available to guests, since beyond it it's full of beach boys and people selling everything, and you absolutely can't avoid them to have a swim or a

simple walk on your own. During the period I stayed at the Aquarius they built a footbridge with two beautiful flights of steps connecting the other two blocks from inside the reception. Honestly I imagine that anyone would prefer to keep going out of the property and walking that gorgeous stretch of road together with the Kenyans. The hotel is spotless and the Kenyan staff truly impeccable, helpful, courteous, discreet and extremely kind. The managers are friendly, but they watched every penny, including electricity, so much so that at 11 pm one of them would do the rounds switching off all the lights in the corridors and staircases leading to the rooms, the sun-shaped ceiling lights on the façade of the Aquarius complex, so that those who, like many, went out and came back at 2 in the morning found themselves in the dark.

What's more they often cut the power so that those sort of air conditioners you had in your room didn't work, just as the advertised hydromassage by the Lily Palm pool isn't turned on to save money. From one of the managers we also discovered that when the hotel is full, being very large and the common areas very cramped, people don't know where to put themselves and even in the restaurant they're forced to do shifts. You can't consider it a 4-star hotel and above all they're still not able to offer an All Inclusive worthy of the name. The food is quite good, very Italian, the cooks really excellent; don't go with the idea of tasting, on the Kenyan speciality evening, shark and crocodile because you'll never taste them — they did it the first two years for publicity a few times but now they don't any more.

Even though there the fish really costs next to nothing — just think that 1 kg of lobster costs less than 4 euros — the fish you eat in the hotel is sailfish, which depending on how it's cooked is very tough and not very tasty. It's a hotel with an exclusively Italian clientele, it almost feels like a branch of Rimini. We saw the owners' daughter with her doormat, oh sorry her husband, who was obviously very aloof, never mingling with the hoi polloi, never a smile, never a reply to a greeting; the only great effort was having to eat, but not always in the same restaurant as her subjects, always on her pedestal. What a shame, guys!!! The rooms are a bit spartan, but we're in Kenya, yet spotlessly clean, the linen changed every day, and included you get two nice little mignon soaps and that's it.

An incredible thing we found was the minibar locked with a key, I couldn't believe it, you can ask for the key and I think you don't even pay, but even more I didn't understand what the key was for. Anyway Kenya is a place to visit, to love, to see, to listen to; it leaves a void inside you when you leave it, and you can't wait to go back; all in all it was a fantastic holiday, there time seems to stand still, your body and your mind relax, but if you want a tip, contact already from Italy the best tour guide or rather the best beach boy, trustworthy and serious and who saves you a heap of money on excursions: ZUCCHERO, you won't regret it, and if before leaving you want to get an idea of what he can offer you, try contacting him, his email is zuccherojirah@hotmail.com or by phone +254****6394 - or if you want info just contact me too..! JAMBOOO!!!!!