Location
Only 70 Kilometers from Mombasa, Shimoni Village is a world away from the lights of any city and tarmac roads. When you turn left on the Mombasa Dar Es Salaam main road towards Shimoni, its 15 kilometers of dirt road, leading down a pensinsula that gets narrower as its approaches the ocean. Old coastal forest and thicket greet you almost immediately, interspaced a while by rice paddies, mango and coconut trees. Baboons huddle across the road, wild in their natural habitat, and vervet monkeys hide in tree tops. If you don’t see the Colobus monkeys on the way down, you will for sure have a chance in the Shimoni forest area directly behind the village. Most mornings they can be seen on a forest walk down the road. Marvelous with their white cloaks this magnificent primate, so dignified and calm. You might not realize it but you are then looking at a much endangered species, just you don’t realize it in Shimoni.
As you enter the village you have entered the edge of the Wasini channel. You pass the infamous “Shimoni caves” project. Once a hidden and forgotten cave, its history preserves a troubled past. Shimoni was a notorious area known for holding slaves and controlled by foreigners. These caves are now home of many different varieties of bats, including at least one very rare species, and are a national monument.
The local economy as you enter the village is comprised of a few shops, some traders, and the fisherman and more obvious now the people that surround the dhow trade to Kisite. This is an official port, but its most regular customers are the Dhow loads of cloves that sail in from Pemba and are traded through the customs building, adjacent to the lodge. The air can at times be rife with the whiff of pungent clove oil, as the sacks are bodily unloaded from the boats onto land, and onwards to their unknown and secretive buyers. Small dwellings and a mosque dot the surrounding commercial centre of the village.
