It was late at night. The train still had not come yet. I curled up in a ball like a kitty cat and closed my eyes. Suddenly – Tu tu tu tu tu tu tu tu tu. Something had woken me up. The train had finally arrived. We ate dinner. Then I climbed back up to my bed and closed my eyes – I was asleep. Dad woke me up early the next day to have breakfast. We ate – then lazed around. The last eight hours were boring. The train had a bathroom – so we didn’t need to stop. They said it would be 14 hours. Actually it was 18 hours. The train left at midnight and they didn’t serve lunch or an extra dinner, so you can imagine how hungry we were by the time we got off the train.

We took a taxi to Diani Beach. The ferry there took forever! When we got there we stared at the hotel Diani Reef Resort. We ate dinner then went to our room. There was a leak in the ceiling, so we went to change our room. Finally we found the right room. The next day we ate breakfast then chilled for most of the day. We hung out by the beach. I had so much fun playing with my new friend Jason! Then the pool – and afterwards walked out of our resort to the Barclays . We bought a few things at the Nakumat. Next we went back to our hotel. When we came back to our room we made an amazing discovery. There was a monkey under our inside table! We had forgotten to lock our sliding glass door to our balcony! They had stolen our coffee, sugar, and cookies. They had also eaten all our bananas, leaving us just the peels.

“I was gonna eat one of those bananas, ” my dad said.

The room was a mess. Sugar was everywhere, muddy paw prints were on my parents’ bed, and banana peels could be found on the table. So while we ate dinner, our room was cleaned. When we got back, we showered and slept.

We woke up early the next morning to go snorkeling. We had a great time. We saw colorful fish in red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, purple, pink, and black coral. There was one skinny yellow fish that was about a foot long! It was swimming above a green coral. We also saw a whole school of gray fish.

When we got back we went to the beach. I played in the water. Then, excruciating pain touched my knees and wrapped around my wrist. I looked at the jellyfish’s tentacle. It was gray with blue rings. It thought it was an octopus.

“Oh my god, I hope I don’t die,” I thought.

I knew that the Blue-Ringed Octopus was the size of one’s hand, but venomous enough to kill hundreds on people in one bite. I pinched the tentacle. The creature let go. If you want to know what it felt like, it felt like the pain of fire mixed with the pain of poison. That hurts! I didn’t even cry. Not one tear. The stings were healed with medicinal cream. By morning I was better. Even so, some of the stings were still visible a few days later! On the last day we just hung out at the beach. Luckily, there were no more stinging jellyfish!

Monkey Thief

Eating on the train

Climbing into bed on train

Long train to Mombasa

Baobab Tree