Damaged tyres and burnt hotels

We were meant to fly to Lamu from Malindi but when the 32 seat Saab turboprop came in from Nairobi the captain came in (it's a tiny lounge at Malindi airport) and said he didn't like a tear in one of the tyres and so he wouldn't fly to Lamu. "It might last one more take-off and landing". We were therefore shunted to a hotel for the night to wait for the next day’s flight. (“Scorpio Villas” was fine, but initial impressions were not favourable; there had been a fire in December and the first buildings we saw were burned and crumbling.) When we returned next day, the plane had disappeared, and lo-and-behold it arrived with passengers from Nairobi. I asked what had happened; had a tyre been brought up before the plane went to Nairobi? Apparently not, the plane had simply gone to Nairobi after we had left. As we were about to board the plane to Lamu, please note, the girl told us the pilot thought he could land the plane at Nairobi but Lamu was "a bit rough"!

On landing at Lamu the fire tender was on hand, but parked under a tree with its cab up for servicing the engine, rather than prepared for action. The ground staff just changed their fluorescent jackets to suit the incoming flight and picked a handcart with the label of the relevant hotels to carry passengers’ luggage. There was a mechanical weighing machine and even an X-ray machine with a generator to power it, all under a thatched roof with no walls.

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