A beach ball

‘Watamu is my favourite place in the world,’ my friend declared when I told her where I was going for a long weekend. For her, Watamu means Christmas. Like many visitors to Hemingways and other hotels alowhang the Watamu coast, her family are loyal repeat customers, returning year after year to this little village on the Kenyan coast around 75 miles north of Mombasa.

The coast has had its ups and downs. It became a popular holiday destination in the late 1960s and for several decades earned a decent income from visitors. In the 1990s and the 2000s, tourism had more of a struggle. Politics, terrorism and some well-publicised murders all played their part in putting people off. In 2015, the Foreign Office advised British travellers to avoid the Kenyan coast due to terror threats from the Al-Shabaab group. That year, Hemingways Watamu made the decision to close for seven months — from April to November — due to low tourist numbers.