We went to Lamu Island, a world heritage site and a recommended place to visit in Kenya. Don’t go. There was a lot of trash and there’s not much there. The Airbnb that we had reserved was a disaster. Missing windows, screens with holes in them, dreary and decrepit. We scrambled to find another place. Fortunately, we ended up with a better place and it was only $35/night instead of $45/night (the downside being that for the Airbnb place it would have been free through using Airbnb credits. For the new place we had to pay cash). We told the previous Airbnb owner that we weren’t going to check in because of the problems and he acknowledged the problems and happily gave us a full refund.
None of the Airbnbs on Lamu have hot water, so we ended up taking cold showers for four days. The highlight of our time there was doing some standup paddleboarding in a channel between mangroves.
After our disappointing time at Lamu Island, we caught a plane back to Nairobi. We had an excellent night in the Razana hotel with blessedly hot water, good a/c, a comfortable bed, etc. our cost was $47 after using $26 in Expedia credit (points options were available, but this was in a good location and we wanted to save our points).
