1 Day Safari Malindi Gedi Ruins Tours
Gende ruins Mombasa, Mombasa Short Safaris, Excurssions From Mombasa, Mombasa Safaris, Day Trips, Mombasa Old Town Day Trips, Kenya Coastal Short Safaris, Day Tours Mombasa, Day Adventures Mombasa, day Travels Mombasa, Oasis Safaris, Kenya Coast Travels, Kenya Coast Ecxurssions, Malindi & Gedi Tour: Malindi & Gedi Tour takes you to Malindi across the new Mtwapa and Kilifi bridges to visit the Gedi ruins. Continue to Malindi
and view marine life in a glass - bottom boat at the Marine Park. After lunch in a local restaurant visit the Snake Farm and the Falconry. En route toMombasa stop at a local village to watch Giriama dancers.
Itinerary
This tour starts very early from
Mombasa to Malindi town to catch up with the Marine park trip from
Watamu. After that you will proceed to Malindi town to se the Vasco da
Gama pillar and then to Gedi Ruins on your way back to Mombasa in the
afternoon.
Malindi is one of Kenya's coastal
towns north of Mombasa. Just like Mombasa, Malindi holds a lot of
history. Its scenic beauty and clean white beaches makes it one of the
most visited towns. The Swahili people are the predominant culture found
in Malindi. This is a multi-ethic city, a mixture of different culture
and religious, a multi colored human rainbow, this is how Malindi can be
presented. Down town and old center, the local market building and
touristic resorts. Malindi is Kenyan beach holiday at all. Malindi is
the liveliest and entertaining place along the coast, with its discos,
restaurant and pubs night parties on the beach, the casino. Everything
needed to make an unforgettable holiday.
Malindi was made famous
after Vasco da Gama's stop over in 1498. In Malindi, you will see narrow
alleys in the old part of town where the old houses have been lived in
for centuries. One of the oldest East African churches still stands
strong; the Church of St. Francis Xavier still stands strong across from
Vasco da Gama's pillar, where he carved the Christian cross. Also
extant is the Juma'a mosque, which was misused as a haven for slave
trading until mid 1870's.
Gede Ruins is a 12th
Century Swahili village that was mysteriously abandoned some 600 years
ago due to unknown causes. It is now a National Museum, and the ruins
are heavily overgrown with beautiful indigenous forest trees, baobabs
and tamarind. Well worth a walk and a visit. Look out for Syke's
Monkeys, and the Golden Rumped Elephant Shrew can also be seen here. A
quiet, careful look in some of the old wells can turn out the odd owl,
too. The tour of Malindi area will encompass a visit to the lost city of
Gedi, the town of Malindi, a ride out to sea in a glass bottom boat and
lunch at Hemingway’s Beach Resort or Turtle Bay Beach Resort before
disembarking back to Mombasa.
Gedi Ruins, Kenya
Explanation, Facts and History
The
historic site known as Gedi is on the Mombasa-Malindi road, sixty-five
miles from Mombasa and ten miles from Malindi. It consists of the ruins
of a fifteenth century Arab-African town, typical of a number of such
towns up and down the coast of East Africa but the only one which is
maintained as a place of public display. During your trip to Kenya for a
safari, beach vacation or alternative adventure, a day historical or
educational trip can be arranged.
Gedi is one of Kenya's great
unknown treasures, a wonderful lost city lying in the depths of the
great Arabuko Sokoke forest. It is also a place of great mystery, an
archaeological puzzle that continues to engender debate among
historians.
To this day, despite extensive research and
exploration, nobody is really sure what happened to the town of Gedi and
its peoples. This once great civilization was a powerful and complex
Swahili settlement with a population of over 2500, built during the 13th
century. The ruins of Gedi include many houses, mansions, mosques and
elaborate tombs and cemeteries.
Despite the size and complexity
of this large (at least 45 acre) settlement, it is never mentioned in
any historic writings or local recorded history. The nearby Portuguese
settlement at Malindi seems to have had no contact with, or even known
of the existence of Gedi. The town has all the appearances of a trading
outpost, yet its position, deep in a forest and away from the sea makes
it an unlikely trading centre. What was Gedi trading, and with whom?
But
the greatest of all of Gedi's mysteries was its sudden and inexplicable
desertion in the 17th century. The entire town was suddenly abandoned
by all of its residents, leaving it to ruination in the forest. There
are no signs of battle, plague, disturbance or any cause for this sudden
desertion.
One current theory is that the town was threatened by
the approach of the Galla, an inland tribe known to be outwardly
hostile at that time, and that the townspeople fled ahead of their
arrival. Yet once again, local recorded history fails to mention any
such large scale evacuation at this time. No written account of either
the rise or sudden fall of Gedi was ever made.
The ghostly ruins
of Gedi lay within the forest that has overgrown and consumed the town.
They had become a part of local folklore, regarded as a sinister lair of
malevolent spirits, until archaeologists began to uncover the site in
the 20th century. It was gazetted in 1948.
Today there is an
excellent museum and well trained guides on hand to take visitors
through the ruins. Gedi remains a mysterious and atmospheric place to
visit. The pillars and stone walls, ruined mosques and tombs now lie
among stands of trees. The stone floors are thick with leaves, and giant
shrews scuttle through the deserted houses while birds and butterflies
drift through the air.
