Is this true you can get parasites crawling into your feet etc on the beache sin Kenya? any advice and tips to be safer??!!

cheers

Phil

Not that I am aware - the parasite that you are
referring to is Bilharzia but that is only found in fresh stagnent water so won't be on the coast in Kenya. It is very common in Malawi. it is pretty hideous as it goes in through your feet.
There is nothing you can do to preven this but I recommend going to the doctor on your return to take the medication - it is 2 pills with no side effects. I didn't bother and 18 months later got the actual disease. Have a good trip.

Phil,

We spent about a week on the beach near Mombasa and the only parasites we encountered were of the entrepreneurial type. Most irritating were the guys flogging dodgy safari trips; they wouldn't give-up even after we told them we had already booked one. A German guy at our hotel got taken-in by one of them and learned an expensive lesson. He spent a day waiting for a safari pick-up that never arrived, then started to clue-in. Felt quite bad for him, really.

While swimming we did encounter some type of irritant that seemed to be attached to the seaweed. It left an itchy, burning sensation about 20 minutes after contact, but went away after about 10 minutes. No long term effects except for a very strong desire to return to Kenya. No doubt you'll get that too :)

----- Gart