Diani Beach, Southern Palms Beach Resort Review

Overall Rating

Food, friendly staff, beautiful location, lovely hotel pools

People always trying to sell you something or increase the price for agreed items. Night-time entertainment.

We stayed at the Southern Palms hotel which is located in Diani Beach.

A bit about our trip. We went with Monarch airlines from Gatwick to Mombasa. Journey time - 9 hours - seating predictably tight, but we did at least get 2 meals. From Mombasa, it takes about 30 minutes to clear customs, 30 minutes to the Likoni Ferry, 30 minutes waiting and crossing the river and 30 minutes to Diani Beach the other end, so expect 2 hours from the airport if you go.

Diani Beach is a resort located along a purpose built road. Most of the staff working the hotels live in a satellite town called Ukunde. To get to Diani Beach from Ukunde you go down a single road and have to pass through a police checkpoint. At the T junction, you can then go left or right along Diani Beach.

The hotel we stayed had very nice facilities. The bedroom was nice but the bathroom smelt a bit. We had a raised ground floor room overlooking the seawater pool, which was a great location as it wasn't far to walk to the main restaurant. As well as the seawater pool, there was a freshwater pool, then a beach entrance. The hotel looked spectacular, and you are given a towel card on arrival which you can swap for towels each day. We brought our own, however, and the towel card will cost you 15$ if you lose it, so it's probably a good thing. The safe was supposed to cost £2 per day, but I found pressing reset and typing in any 8 digit number when the safe was open allowed you to set your own pin number. The staff were very friendly, but did often offer to sell something to us. We started tipping 100ksh at each meal, but it's not necessary. I found the food to be really good there. They've got a lot of Indian influence in the region, and there's plenty of seafood, Chinese and meats in the main restaurant. There is also a barbecue restaurant and Italian restaurant which you need to book. Drinks aren't included with the meal, so you need to pay extra. The Tusker beer was about £1.50, coca cola 90p, cocktails between £3-4.50, but wine was between £12-16 so comparatively expensive.

On the beach, there are numerous beach sellers who target tourists to visit their shops or take a boat to the reef which is about 150 yards off the beach. However, they'll only approach if you go on the hard sand, and they're not there late at night. At low tide, you can snorkel out to the reef, but when the tide's coming in, there are massive waves crashing against the beach. My mask and snorkel completely disappeared when a wave knocked them from me. At high tide, the water's really sandy, so it wasn't possible to find them. The beach is picture perfect with talculm white sands. At the beach entrance, there are showers to wash the sand off with.

We went with Thomson and signed up for 1 excursion with them - the Champagne cruise. This was a good trip. It involved us going north of Mombasa to another beach area and then taking a dhow and a glass bottomed boat to a sandbar which is only exposed twice a month at low tide. We were then given a lunch of oysters and champagne and there were some sports activities to do. We did snorkel but there wasn't a whole lot to see there. In the afternoon, we had more and more champagne, after that I don't remember a whole lot, until the very spectacular sunset.

The other 2 excursions we made via the local hotel taxi driver - Joseph. His excursions were 33-40% cheaper than Thomson's.

We went with him to Shimba Hills safari park and were supposed to go to the Elephant sanctuary but the sanctuary wanted us to buy another ticket, and as we'd seen a couple of Elephants by then we didn't bother which was probably a good thing as we had lunch at the Shimba lodge and then Joseph took us to see his rented house in his village and then to the local Snake park in Ukunde. For the 2 of us, we paid 7500ksh for the day's driving, equivalent of 20$ for the entry to Shimba Hills with car and ranger, and 300ksh each for the Snake park. Personally, I thought the Snake park was better value than Shimba, but both were good.

We were also driven by him to Wasini Island. We then took a dhow to Kisite marine reserve were we snorkelled directly off the dhow. This was really good as we saw loads of fish (including a Parrot fish) and we even saw a giant turtle. On the way to Kisite we encountered the dolphins as well. We then went to the Arab village on Wasini island and looked around the coral garden. We finally had lunch at the Shimoni Gardens cafe, not far from where we started. On the dhow, we had 1 drink included, but drinks weren't included for lunch. For this trip, we did an all inclusive total price of 8500ksh for the 2 of us with Joseph, which included the driving and all of the above and the hire of the snorkel, mask and fins.

The difference between Thomson and the local operators, however, is that with Thomson you pay over the odds but get exactly what you agree to. With the local operators they often try to re-negotiate the deal by charging you extra for items which you've previously agreed to. You've got to stand your ground in Africa. They need your money, so usually back down.

Temperature wise it was between 26C and 29C during our stay. It was never cold in the sunlight, but 1 day when we were in the shade, it was quite chilly by the seawater pool at the Hotel. It rained a number of times but in short, dramatic downpours.

The hotel does have good activities during the day e.g. water volleyball, aerobics, tennis courts, water sports for hire. At night, however, there's not a lot to do apart from the table tennis and pool tables. They do do nightly shows but most of it's just local bands. There's no TV in the bedrooms (there is one in the room where they have the welcome drinks), so it was an early night every night for us.

When we got to Mombasa airport on the way back, we had our baggage x-rayed as we got in to the airport, then we had our boarding card & passport checked, then we joined another queue to have our luggage physically searched, then we went to check in to deposit our hold luggage. We then had our boarding card and passport checked going through to departures, and when we got to the departure gate, we had our hand baggage x-rayed, we had to stand on a platform which measured our weight and then we were physically frisked. It took about 2 hours from arriving at the airport until we'd been scanned enough that they were sure we were good to get on board.