Paté town, on the west side of the island, is a functioning village carved out of orange and brown coral ragstone. The Nabahani ruins , which are slowly vanishing under a riot of tropical vegetation and banana plantations, are just outside town. They’ve never been seriously excavated, yet National Museums of Kenya still manages to charge you KSh500 to enter! A lot of locals will tell you to go after sunset for free – we plead silence on passing moral judgement on this activity.
The modern village itself is almost identical in design and construction to the ruins and, in fact, the two merge almost seamlessly into one another. Paté, with its tall coral-ragstone houses and narrow streets leading to a small port among the mangroves, is a fascinating place to wander around.
