Travelling Golfers Guide

golf in kenya

Language: Swahili and English
Currency: Kenya Shilling (KES)
International Dialling Code: +254
Voltage: 240
Time: UTC/GMT +3
Number of Golf Courses: approximately 40
National Airline: Kenya Airlines www.kenya-airways.com
National Tourist Board: www.magicalkenya.com
National & regional golf publications:

The following article was written in the nineties and will soon be updated.

K enya in a week is not really recommended. At least not if you intend covering the distance we did. But the very pleasurable first stop at the Windsor Golf and Country Club certainly eased us gently in to what was going to be a week of hectic travel. The hotel, its rooms and service could not be faulted and the golf course, already established as the finest in Kenya well stood up to its name. Although I only managed nine holes with the manager Timothy Kagambi at 6.30 am, it was a really delightful experience. Wide fairways, lush trees and scampering monkeys gave a great impression with which to start the day.

Windsor Golf and Country Club

Windsor course

Kenya Airways, who flew us down to Mombasa provides a very good internal service to the country. With faulted geography I had not realized that Mombasa was an island, which you enter by a causeway from the airport and leave by an amazingly busy and bustling ferry, two of which plough back and forth endlessly filled to the brim. We eventually reached our destination, the Indian Ocean Beach Hotel, a low Moorish styled building with a hundred rooms scattered around it. These spacious and homely rooms with carved furnishings had all the amenities you could want. For golfers the Indian Ocean Beach Club and its more commercial sister hotel Nyali Beach have green fee arrangements with the 18 hole Nyali Golf and Country Club nearby. It was while we were at the Nyali Beach Hotel we met up with Mike Kirkland, who having been born and bred in Kenya not only has his own car hire and safari tours, but also a highly successful restaurant on a lovely old restored Dow. It was here that I came face to face with a Dow Special, an encounter that I wish had happened earlier in my life. The ingredients are vodka, ice, honey and half a fresh lime. You are also given a strong stick, which is used between sips to stir the honey that lies on the bottom of the glass and press the juice out of the lime. Then you drink and again stir the honey and press the lime. When you have finished you take another Dow Special and stir the honey with the stick, press the lime and drink. When that one is finished you take another Dow Special, stir it with the lime, press the honey with the stick and drink. Then take another Dow Special and stir the lime with the glass, press the stick with the honey and drink the ice - this continues until you feel you have had enough.

We all like to sunbathe - even camels!

The safari side of our trip started at the Aberdare Country Club, a converted private house once belonging to someone purported to have been part of the Happy Valley group, whose notorious adventures are well documented in the book and film White Mischief. The one feature of the nine hole layout at the Aberdare is something I have never come across before in all my travels - the bunkers did not have sand, but sawdust in them, very effective as well as inflammable. An overnight stay at the Ark gave an opportunity to see and photograph a good selection of Kenya's wildlife drinking and browsing around a large lake. Bleary-eyed from our nocturnal surveillance we headed back to Nairobi and the Norfolk Hotel for a good dinner and overnight stay. The Norfolk is still the main stay of social activity in Nairobi as it has been for many years and where Sunday breakfast is still eagerly anticipated. In between our major stops we visited several good courses but too rushed to take everything in. But I had managed to acquire the most knowledgable book on golf courses in Kenya that had just been published and one I would thoroughly recommend, called "Rhinos in the Rough".

Editor Keith Hewitt, with a group of Kenyan children and teachers, lending a hand on

"Tree Day", where once a year all the school children plant a fresh tree for the future.

End

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