Zanzibar

Beaches & CovesZanzibar,Tanzania

A Tanzanian island of white sand and dhow sails, with a coral-stone old capital and clove groves that once supplied four-fifths of the world.

September·Peaking now

Jun–Sep

The long dry season, the island at its best: clear skies, little rain, cooler nights, the sea still a warm 26°C. The southeast Kusi wind peaks in July for Paje's strongest kitesurfing, and humpback whales pass the Mnemba channel in August and September.

Year-round Stone Town, the spice farms and white-sand beaches stand year-round; twice a day the tide drains out to bare a wide plain of wet sand and the women's seaweed plots. The sea stays swimmable.

Zanzibar is an Indian Ocean island of white sand, shallow turquoise lagoons and wooden dhows leaning across the water under a single triangular sail. The coast is what most people come for: fine sand that stays cool underfoot, water banded in every shade of green. Off Nungwi and Kendwa at the northern tip it is deep enough to swim all day; at Paje on the east coast it is wind-raked, which is where the kitesurfers go. The island's other half is Stone Town, the old capital: a warren of coral-stone houses and heavy carved doors, where African, Arab, Indian and European lives have mixed for more than a thousand years. It is now protected as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Inland, clove, cinnamon and coconut plantations still scent the air. Cloves are what made the island rich: by the late 1800s Zanzibar supplied roughly four-fifths of the world's supply. The island's strangest sight comes twice a day, when the tide drains away. Along the east and southeast coasts the sea pulls back several hundred metres, uncovering a bright plain of wet sand, tidal pools and stranded boats. Out on the flats, women in bright kangas wade to their seaweed plots — the island's other great export, tended almost entirely by women — while children splash in the warm pools left behind. When the evening wind turns, the beached dhows lift off the sand and set sail again, their sails darkening against a sky going orange behind Stone Town. Inland, the Jozani forest shelters the Zanzibar red colobus, a tuft-headed monkey found on no other island on Earth. Zanzibar now lives on tourism as much as spice, but a dhow on the water and the smell of cloves are still what set it apart.

Worth knowing

Good to know

Check the tide chart before you plan a beach day — on the east and southeast coasts the sea can retreat several hundred metres at low tide, leaving flats instead of swimming water for hours.
Avoid the long rains of April and May — they can wash out whole beach days; the island then runs dry from June to October, with a shorter dry spell around December to February.
Cover shoulders and knees away from the beach — Zanzibar is a conservative, mostly Muslim island, and modest dress in the villages and in Stone Town is both expected and appreciated.
Ramadan changes the whole island for a month — restaurants outside hotel grounds must shut through daylight, and eating, drinking or smoking in the street while people fast causes real offence.

Things to do

1
Sail out on a wooden dhow at sunset
Board a wooden dhow as the afternoon wind picks up, and let the crew sail you out over the shallows under a single triangular sail. There is no engine, just the creak of timber and the water sliding past as the light softens toward evening.
2
Snorkel the turquoise shallows
Ride out with local boatmen to the reefs that lie just off the coast, where the water shifts from pale green to deep blue over the coral. Slip in with a mask and you drift above parrotfish, urchins and clouds of small reef fish in water warm enough to stay in for hours.
3
Walk out across the low-tide flats
When the tide draws back it leaves a shining plain of wet sand you can walk for hundreds of metres. Pick your way past tidal pools, stranded fishing boats and the staked rows of the seaweed farms, where women work the shallows as the water slowly returns.
4
Get lost in Stone Town's carved-door lanes
Give Stone Town a slow afternoon and let its maze of coral-stone alleys pull you off any planned route, past heavy brass-studded doors and the old sultans' palaces. Walk it without a map in the softer light of late afternoon, when the heat eases, and follow whichever lane looks most inviting until you come out at the seafront.
5
Wander Nungwi's boatyards and lighthouse
On the island's northern tip, Nungwi is where the big dhows are still built by hand on the open sand, their ribs and planks shaped with simple tools. Between the boatyards and the old Ras Nungwi lighthouse, the fishing beach fills and empties with the day's catch and tide.
6
Tour a spice farm
Walk a working plantation with a guide who snaps twigs, roots and pods for you to smell and taste — clove, nutmeg, cinnamon, cardamom and vanilla growing side by side. Smelling them growing, rather than reading a label, is what explains why this small island was once worth fighting over.
7
Find the red colobus at Jozani
Follow the boardwalk into Jozani Forest, the last stronghold of the Zanzibar red colobus, a russet, tuft-headed monkey found nowhere else on Earth. Troops feed and groom in the low branches close overhead, unbothered by visitors, while the trail runs on into tall mangroves.

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