Thursday, June 18: The Train

Thursday was a day to pack and squeeze in the last few things to do. Sarah and Lisa spent quite a few hours on the beach. Evey took an outrigger ride. Timothy, Gail, and I went to Haller Park, a sort of zoo near our apartments. Christine took a nap.

Haller Park was pretty nice. It was set in the woods, with some animals roaming free. The dangerous ones were in areas surrounded by walls to keep us apart. There were lots of silly monkeys running all around. The highlight of the day was Timothy feeding a giraffe.

Our driver arrived at $:45 to take us to the train station. Mombasa traffic was heavy, but nothing like Nairobi. We arrived at the train station, and were very unsure of the procedure we needed to follow. A guard sent me to the booking window to get boarding passes (we had pre-purchased the tickets). I met the others on the platform. There was no train yet, so we just sat and waited.

About 6, the train backed into the station, and people started boarding. We had no idea which car to get on. We asked someone, and he suggested we look at our boarding passes. That was helpful. Each pass had the coach number and compartment letters. Of course, the coaches were not arranged in any order. The train was not too long, so it did not take but a few minutes to locate the two cars we were in. We had booked one second class coach compartment (for 4) and three first class compartments (2 people each, except David got his own room).

The passages to the compartments were very narrow. The first class compartments were adjacent, and David's actually had a second door to ours, allowing for a more open floor plan. The car in front of ours was the Restaurant Car. The four girls were three cars ahead of that.

Our compartment had a bench seat along one side with a bunk above. The bench seat was way too deep to sit on normally, but was comfortable if you curled your legs up on it. Opposite the seat was a narrow closet with a ladder attached to it to aid in climbing o the top bunk. There was also a sink and mirror. The lights did not work until about 6:30 when they turned the power on.

We spent a lot of time standing in the passageway, looking out the windows on the right side of the train. The window in our compartment only went down about two inches. There were people playing guitar on the platform, and others eating and drinking at the trackside cafe. Someone came by and asked to see our tickets. Someone else came by and asked if we wanted to eat at the first or second sitting; we selected first.

The train left exactly at 7 PM, right on schedule. I was surprised. It was already dark, so there was little to see other than city lights, and they quickly faded from view. One of the porters (is that the right name) walked through the passageway ringing a three tone xylophone. This was the call for dinner.

The Restaurant Car had a line of fans down the center of the roof, all rotating in a circular motion. The tables were set with a proper British air. The menu said we would get cream of mushroom soup, breaded fish with tartar sauce, choice of chicken curry, vegetables and rice, beef goulash and Lyonaisse potatoes, and dessert consisting of a fruit plate and ice cream.

We soon were served soup. It was a cream of tomato soup. There was no fish, but the main course followed soon after we finished the soup. The servers brought the food on platters and served from them to our plates. For dessert, only the fruit plate was offered. We had been wishing for ice cream, but there apparently was none. We ordered sodas for a slight fee, and went back to our compartments with full tummies. Oh... they did bring tea. The server had two pitchers, and we assumed one was black tea, and the other African tea (tea made in milk). Evey asked for the milk tea, pointing to the pitcher that was not black tea. She got a cup full of plain milk. He walked away so quickly, she did not have a chance to correct the error. We all had a good laugh. When he returned, he added some tea (although there was not much room left) to remedy the mistake.

The beds had been made up in our compartments while we were out. We went to bed right away. The clickity-clack of the wheels kept me awake for a while, but I was finally overcome by the swaying of the car. I woke a little later, and noticed the train was no longer moving. I drifted back to sleep, and remember nothing more until 7 AM when I woke for the day.