About 12 km north of central Mombasa, on the Bamburi cement company's old worked-out limestone quarries, sits one of the more unusual environmental projects in East Africa. Haller Park is what happens when you give a Swiss agronomist forty years and a moonscape: a working nature reserve with giraffes, hippos, antelope, crocodiles, monkeys and tortoises living in habitat reclaimed from industrial waste. The hippo feeding at four in the afternoon is the headline event for visiting families.
Beyond the animals, the park is set up for a half-day visit — there are reptile and butterfly houses, a fish farm, a nature trail through young indigenous forest, and a viewpoint over a freshwater lake that supports water birds. The whole thing is sober proof that rehabilitating worked-out industrial land can work, given enough patience and the right scientist.