Malindi & Gedi Ruins

Malindi is Kenya's oldest coastal resort town — the Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama stopped here in 1498, and the pillar he erected still stands on the headland watching over the Indian Ocean. Just 20km south, hidden in a forest near Watamu, the Gedi Ruins are one of East Africa's greatest mysteries: a 13th-century Swahili trading town of mosques, palaces, and merchants' houses abandoned in the 17th century for reasons historians still debate. The forest has reclaimed the coral stone walls, and black-and-white colobus monkeys now live in the fig trees above the old sultan's palace. Pair these extraordinary historical sites with Malindi Marine National Park — one of Kenya's first marine protected areas — and some of the best deep-sea fishing waters in the Indian Ocean, and you have a coastal experience that goes far deeper than a beach holiday.