BAD TRIPS Vol.1: MIKE’S CAMP

Remember that friend from high school, the first one who convinced you to smoke a joint, drop a tab, take a trip?  You trusted them implicitly perhaps because of their exceptional sartorial choices, or taste in music.  We have one such friend now, one whose homes are beautiful dens of comfort, whose sense of adventure is akin to ours, whose generosity, warmth and kindness is unparalleled.  So when he proposed a Kenyan escapade to ring out the first year of the pandemic, we couldn’t think of a more perfect place with a more perfect companion.  And indeed, the first week spent on a stunning private reserve over Christmas was nothing short of idyllic.  But as the final days of 2020 ticked away, we set our eyes on Kiwayu, a small island neighboring Somalia, and a little retreat known as Mike’s Camp.   Our journey into darkness began…

For years I’d been told of the exotic magic of Lamu, a shabby oasis off the coast of Kenya.  In particular, the iconic Peponi Hotel, a Chateau Marmont for British aristocracy who crave adventure and stiff drinks, set against a backdrop of modern-day pirates who’ve made their way south.  Indeed, Peponi’s is just that, and I strongly urge you to go there, especially after a week of inland safari.  Sadly, I could not convince my wife or the rest of our group…

The approach by boat to the legendary Peponi

Instead, our friend suggested a magical retreat two hours north.  Of course it sounded incredible, we were offered to be flown in via private plane to avoid multiple layovers and a lengthy boat ride.  But as our puddle-jumper touched down on a dusty strip and was greeted by a 1980s Suzuki 4x4 outfitted with a machine-gun-on-a-tripod, I realized this was not the vacation I had expected.  No staff outfitted in neatly tucked-in Lacostes adorned with the hotel’s insignia waiting with a eucalyptus-scented  towel and arrival cocktail meant to combat the jetlag , we were instead tossed into the cab of the truck.   A bumpy 15 minute car ride took us to a tin-can boat that drove us 30 minutes north into uncharted waters.

When we finally arrived at the island I saw no dreamy huts dotting white sand beaches.  Instead there was a dock with further armed guards and a steep slope heading up a cliff I was told to climb.  You see, at one time Mike’s Camp apparently did have waterside dwellings but it simply made it too easy for kidnappers to whisk in by boat, snatch tourists, and head off.  After realizing the success of this drive-thru approach to hostage-taking (and therefore the dwindling number of return guests), Mike had the bright idea to move the rooms up to the top of the cliff.

the skeletal remains of the oceanside huts

There’s a wind that sweeps through the south of France each summer called a mistral.  It lasts a handful of days and is so unrelenting that it is common knowledge one can be acquitted of murder with the wind as an excuse, its torment is so great.  Our trip to Mike’s Camp coincided with the Kenyan equivalent.  The thatched huts featured no windows, thus no shelter from the constant pounding gusts.  The winds not only rendered swims in the crystal blue waters or even strolls on the deserted beaches impossible, it even precluded a retreat to your bedroom for a reprieve.

Of course no hotelier is in control of weather so it’s hard to deduct points for this, but another fun fact of the resort is that the only readily available potable water source for the island’s colony of blue-assed monkeys happens to be in your toilet.  So a 2AM shuffle to pee reveals a dozen set of eyes perched on the seat of the loo, while the monkey’s cupped hands splash grey water into their mouths.

Each communal meal at Mike’s Camp is executed by Mike’s sister, a British expat in her late 60s whose exposure to the sun is surpassed only by her exposure to nicotine. The ash of the perennial Marlboro 100 dangling precariously from her lips surely made its way into more than one entree.  That said, I must say that the food was the highlight of the trip.  The banter around the table however, was not.

On our first evening we were in the presence of Mike, his sister, two couples I’ve since forgotten, a family of five, and a quietly belligerent pair of German men I’ll get to in a bit.  All I remember of the family of five was that they were repeat customers (I still struggle to wrap my head around this) and their eldest daughter was about 14 years old.  Mike’s dog had taken a liking to this young teen and eventually bit her (gently) in the ankle.  As Mike’s sister shooed the dog away, I turned to my seat mate to chat, and when I turned back around I noticed that Mike was no longer at my side: he had gotten on all fours under the table and was busy alternately licking the 14 year old’s ankle and barking like a dog.  The parents laughed off the antic by flippantly saying “oh Mike, she’s too young for you.” I can’t remember what we had for dessert.

A brief description of Mike: imagine Harvey Weinstein as a drunk Brit who you caught outside a pub pissing in the alley while trying to light a cigarette with the butt of his previous one.  His fascinating family history involved grandparents who, upon returning from frontline combat in WWI, were offered free farmland in Kenya as compensation for a job well done polishing off the Germans.  The ensuing trek down there involved crating family heirlooms like a seven-foot-tall mirror atop elephants, across the entire country.  Eventually they settled on the secluded island on which the resort rests.

Our host for the week.

The climax of the holiday of course was New Year’s Eve, where friends had invited us to take in Peponi’s glamorous gala before hopping on our flight home at the adjacent airport in the AM.  But Sarah declined and instead lured our friends to our isle of despair, sure that Mike & Co. were going to crank up the dusty stereo that had been dormant all week and dazzle us with a fête the likes of which we’d never see again.  Well, it turned out that the reason the stereo had been dormant was that it broke in 1993 and Mike never bothered replacing it.  Beyond a music-free cocktail hour and his sister’s least imaginative meal of the week, it turns out not much else had been planned.

But a quick note about the two middle-aged German men I’d mentioned a couple paragraphs ago.  They’d come to Mike’s Camp for a week of fishing, paying a hefty daily supplement to the already-hefty cost of accommodations to charter a boat for some deep-sea adventures.  They returned each evening empty-handed and then spent each night before dinner drowning their sorrows at the bar, growing more and more belligerent, insisting Mike was stealing from them.  Adding insult to injury was another family comprised of a beautiful mother who was a half-Spanish half-Moroccan jewelry designer, a father as dashing as a young Hugh Grant in the role of Indiana Jones who was not just a documentary filmmaker but also a boatsman who crafted his own canoes, and their perfect nine year old child who went off every morning at sunrise in the boat he and his father had built together, always returning with a dozen freshly-caught barracudas which he paraded unwittingly before the Germans as they breakfasted aghast .

But the horrific boating experiences were not reserved exclusively for these two. At some point the monotony of not being able to go to the beach got to us and we were told that exceptional snorkeling awaited just twenty minutes away by boat. So our gang gamely boarded a thin-metaled battered hull that smashed against increasingly larger waves to the terrifying point of near-capsize and semi-permanent back injury. When we finally arrived at the secret cove, we were unceremoniously dumped off with our gear and told that the boat would return to pick us up in an hour. The only hitch? The tide was low, the water never rising above our ankles. The other hitch? The place was replete with sea urchins, so for an entire hour we had to wait, standing up, making sure not to walk too far to the left right, in front or behind us, lest the creatures drive their spikes into our flippered feet. It was a long hour…

The Germans meanwhile reached their limit on the last night of the year.  The wind, the liquor, the lack of fish, the beautiful family’s child’s preponderance of fish, it was all too much for them.  So once we sat down to overcooked langoustines, and as I looked out in the distance to the adjacent pavilion and the bats swarming around my own son while he tried to play ping-pong, I noticed what appeared to be a bat flying right past me.  A split-second later a blood-curdling shriek erupted from my seat mate.  Apparently, as a final act of retaliation for a week of deception, the Germans had lobbed a lemon wedge towards Mike and accidentally hit my friend in the eye, blinding him for the remainder of the evening.  Insults were exchanged, punches were pulled, and the clock counted down to midnight while we all sat arms-folded in a couple hammocks waiting to put what was hopefully the worst year of our lives behind us.

The following morning, after a two hour boat ride we finally sat drinking a coffee on the deck of Peponi’s, watching the hotel ready itself for their yearly New Year’s Regatta around Lamu.  All the hotel’s guests lazing around the veranda or beside the hazy pool seemed to be part of an unspoken chummy clique that of course I desperately yearned to be a part of.  But I would have to content myself with the strong macchiato and a t-shirt from the souvenir shop that I could wear for years to come in the hopes that someone in the know would know that I know all about Peponi’s, a hotel that remains just beyond my grasp.