Mombasa Beaches

The beaches of the East African coast are superb. The sand is coral white, blinding in the midday sun. Behind the beach stand ranks of coconut palms whose fronds whisper in the breeze. Below the beach the sea floor shelves gently into deeper water until, about a mile or so out, it starts to rise again. Coral masses become increasingly frequent, merging until they build into the great hog's back of the fringing reef, on the outside of which the massive swells of the Indian Ocean smash themselves into a maelstrom of foam. The reef protects the lagoon, both from the worst of the waves and from ocean predators like sharks.

This is one of my favourite photographs. It shows Tony Chetham sitting astride a palm which leans out across the beach at Nyali. It puts our childhoods into context.

There are so many beautiful beaches along the coast to the north and south of Mombasa - Shelly Beach, Diani, Two Fishes, Nyali, Tiwi, Vipingo, Bamburi, Shanzu. This is Kikambala, with Avril Baxter, the girl who, according to my mother, gave me the name Jonathan, and I pulling Richard along the beach.

Low tide exposes miles of sand flats and coral pools, the latter filled with myriad sea creatures. With our skins tanned the colour of mahogany we could play out there for hours, even in the midday sun, until the tide started to slide in, the first advancing water hot from the heat of the exposed sand, rapidly deepening, drowning our castles and canals.

As the water deepened we put on goggles and swam out across the forests of sea grass duck-diving for shells, while at spring tides, when the water deepened enough for the ocean swell to come in across the reef, we sat in inflated inner tubes and paddled over the breaking waves. In this picture can be seen, far out along the horizon, the white of the breakers on the reef.

I have been back to that coast, not to Kenya because the beaches we remember are crowded with tourists and touts, but to Tanzania, where some of the beaches are as empty and as beautiful as those that crowd my memory.

Many thanks to Tony Chetham for the top picture.