'The places we associate with love are the places we seek to conserve'
Although I am not married and don’t know if I ever will be I always imagined I would get married on a beach. I always imagined I would be married somewhere wild and beautiful like East Sooke Park near my home of Victoria, Vancouver Island. When I was younger my parents took my brothers and I on many hikes and barbeques in this park…and many of the gorgeous spots overlooking the ocean would be perfect for a wedding!
In 2006 I spent nearly a year working on a project studying the dolphin populations off the south coast of Kenya. Just prior to leaving for Kenya my parents and I went for dinner with their friends who had lived in Kenya many decades earlier. This amazing couple filled me in on life in Kenya during the pre-Lonely Planet days and told me about a beach, Tiwi Beach, where they had spent their honeymoon years earlier. It was great to hear their story and I grew excited anticipating the life I would live on the other side of the world in a very different country.
The white sandy beaches of Kenya
During my time in Kenya I put Tiwi Beach and their honeymoon to the back of my mind…that is until I decided to spend a weekend away there and also ended up having a very memorable romantic evening on this same beach. Tiwi beach is a gorgeous white, sand beach on the southeast coast of Kenya. Shortly after we arrived and set up camp my friend Sara and I went snorkelling in the coral rag tide pools typical of this part of the African coastline.
Tiwi Beach has two beautiful large tidepools; one shaped like Australia and the other like Africa. When you swim in 'Africa' you can swim into a cave and watch the bats flying overhead and then swim through a short underwater cave into another pool! It was absolutely fabulous! After a nice day on the beach my friend Sara and I decided to sit in the shallow, sun heated, tidal pools near our camp and eat cheese and crackers and drink wine.
The tidepool shaped like the African continent at Tiwi Beach, Kenya
(Photo source)
Upon returning to our camp we met up with our Austrian neighbours, two brothers who’d driven their big overland truck from Austria to Kenya. We spent the evening around a campfire with the two of them. They were living on this beautiful beach for a month while they recorded music for their band. I hit it off with one of them and our conversation next to the campfire went deep into the night with the sounds of the waves and crickets and the stars overhead as a backdrop to add the magic to the moment. It was one of those experiences that always stay with me and so will the memory of that beach. That place and the emotions attached to it will forever remain in my memory.
I have had romantic moments at the beach, ones that I will never forget, and I know that I, as would my parent’s friends who spent their honeymoon at the beach years before, would be deeply saddened if I went back to a place like Tiwi Beach and found the beach destroyed or polluted. I would feel my memory of a precious moment had also been changed or destroyed. It is these moments that give us that personal connection to the beach and drives us to protect it.
The Tiwi Beach is an alluring attraction in Kenya that lures in a number of beach lovers from around the globe through cheap flights to Mombasa every year. Yes indeed we should conserve and protect these outstanding places so that they are quite often visited by many.
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