Thank God it’s Friday, 2nd January 2004. Apart from the guys with sore and swollen limbs who Dr. Benja attends to, everyone else is looking good on this penultimate day of our holiday. Cases of insomnia abound, however.

Among the first people to wake up on this humid morning is John, who is a little bit unsettled as he has to interrupt his Lamu experience to get a flight back to Nairobi on urgent business.

After making several telephone calls on Dodo's landline and on his cellphone, it emerges that on our way to Kipungani, our boat would take a detour and drop him off at the Lamu airstrip on Manda Island, from where he would take a scheduled 4pm domestic flight to Nairobi.

And so amid searing heat that compels most of us men to go topless, we set sail for Kipungani via Lamu town, a journey lasting just over one hour by boat.

Kipungani bay area has one of the most beautiful sandy beaches on the Kenyan coastline, a factor that the Kenyatta family must have taken into account when they put up the idyllic Kipungani Beach Resort, one of the jewels in the crown of the former first family's Heritage Hotels chain.

En route, we make an hour-long fishing stopover in deeper waters of the Indian Ocean a few hundred metres off the mainland.

Armed with a fishing line, I slip in on the edge of the boat next to June, hoping that the native of the lak'side will pass on her vicariously inherited skills to me to make a bounty catch. Moments before, she had assured me that the alluring flagrance of her sunburn protection cream had been proved to be effective in attracting fish to the water's surface.

But Paul later slips in between June and I and, in the process, “dilutes” the effects of the fragrance. Little wonder one hour of swimming later there is not a single soul of fish caught by any of the 60-plus wannabe fishermen on the boat.

A little bit disappointed, we proceed towards Kipungani for snorkelling.

Nearer Kipungani, the winds get stronger. The high seas are not very far from here. As we alight from the boat, a few guys scramble for snorkelling equipment but trusting my own breathing mechanisms, I choose to use the goggles piece alone.

After everyone alights, and as others test the waters, the boat is turned around and we finally wave kwaheri to John who, in the company of a few other “escorters”, is airstrip-bound.

Meanwhile, hydrophobics choose to bask in the mid-afternoon sun beneath some trees on the relatively tidier, unspoilt beach. A few other guys take a walk towards Kipungani Resort.

On the beach, as in the water, the softness of the underlying sandy carpet feels nice like nowhere else we have been to in Lamu.

Thirty metres offshore, a couple of young fishermen snaring crabs, prawns and shrimps gaze on impassively, their presence mattering less to us.

That is, until there is a near-tragedy.

Oblivious of the fact that one of our tour members is in a distressful situation, we go about our swimming and sunbathing until one of the youthful fishermen dives into the waters and scoops out a struggling Georgie from the area around the snare. Georgie is chocking as the fisherman single-handedly hauls him to the shore. Until this point, no one has noticed anything.

Georgie's snorkelling kit had given him breathing problems while under water and the fisherman had apparently sighted him fighting to stay afloat.

In spite of the incident, we stay on at Kipungani until sunset. Jane and I decide to walk along the crab-infested beach to check out the nearby Kenyatta-owned Kipungani Resort.

Impressed by the simplistic yet ambient set up of the beach resort, we pester a staffer to show us a room, trying hard to look and sound like a sophisticated, high-flying couple. As we are shown around a splendid, out-of-this world tree-house like room, Jane contemplates a holiday with me (don't she deny it) at Kipungani Resort and suggests that we save. I am ready to pay by damn-it card...

It is 9pm or thereabouts when we get back to Dodo's. En route, there had been singing and carnival-like jolliness on the boat. Not a bad way to end the Experience Lamu tour. This is our last night here and early morning will see us off to Mokowe jetty to board our TSS bus to Mombasa.

Some of us spend the last night drinking at the civil servant’s club. I join Annette, Issa, Joan, Njambi, Henry, Esther, Halima (Mark) and Khadija (Karis) for pints. Joseph Nyagari and Martin Wahogo, accompanied by a retinue of a few others, would join us later.

At the club, we are treated to a hilarious moment when Issa, wishing to make an inquiry on behalf of one of the ladies accompanying us, summons the lone barman.

“Hapa, ladies yenyu iko upande gani?” the RC Westlands PP asks the attentive pub staffer.

“Ah, kama unataka ladies wao hukuwa lakini sasa wamekwisha ondoka…”, the barman responds smugly.

We can’t help bursting into prolonged laughter.

The barman thought Issa was interested in flirting with ladies when it was directions to the ladies washroom he was aking for.

Smiling clumsily as though his mistake had dawned on him, the embarrassed dude retreats to the bar.

Overcome by an uncompromising sleepiness, we leave the club early on Saturday morning, just in time to catch up with the very few hours of sleep remaining before departure for Nairobi.

In the four days and three nights spent in Lamu, I must have accumulated sleep debt of 24 hours split into eight hours per night. And I was not alone. If we lost sleep hours that are easily replaceable, then we gained an experience that is not replaceable by any other.

To many of us, Lamu was like footprints on the sands of time.