The spice islands of Zanzibar have traditionally been a hub for merchants, explorers and, more recently, backpackers. But with a new wave of luxury resorts, the Tanzanian archipelago is becoming a draw for travellers who enjoy their five-star comforts. Lisa Grainger checks out the best places to stay. Photographs by Martin Morrell.
Zanzibar
Zanzibar is one of those names, along with Timbuktu, Kilimanjaro and Marrakech, that conjures extraordinary, exotic images – of Arabian Nights scenes coloured with dhows, spices and treasures – as well as evoking darker stories of traders and adventurers on the hunt for elephants, gold, power and slaves.
For centuries, the archipelago of 50 islands has been host to foreigners stopping by to restock or relax. It was to the shores of its main island, Unguja, just 36km off the coast of Tanzania and thick with forests of fruit trees, that the British missionary explorers Livingstone, Speke and Burton came to find supplies and porters for their arduous journeys into the African interior (and it was from here that Livingstone’s body was shipped back to Britain for burial at Westminster). The streets of the capital, Stone Town, are where the poet Rimbaud searched for inspiration, as well as guns and slaves for his own adventures on the continent; and the town’s palaces, famously, were the haunts of Scheherazade. (Not everyone succumbed to its charms; Evelyn Waugh described the island as being so overwhelming, so odorously rich, that ‘an hour’s stroll ashore sufficed, then I retired to the ship for a cold bath and an afternoon under the electric fans’.
The muggy air of Stone Town is filled with the ghosts of invaders who have, over the centuries, tried to make these islands their own. Its elaborately carved doors, coral-built walls, forts and colonial buildings reflect layer upon layer of its past heritage: the Indian sailors who imported durian, lychee, mango, jackfruit and papaya, whose trees now proliferate; the Portuguese adventurers trying to find a passage to the East; the Omani sultans who gave Zanzibar its name (‘Land of the Blacks’ in Persian) and turned this previously quiet paradise into the epicentre of the spice and slave trade. And, finally, it was home to the British, who came to protect the archipelago in 1890 from increasing German encroachment into East Africa; it became part of the newly independent Tanzania in 1964.
Today, nearly half a century later, another sort of invader strolls the streets of Zanzibar: upmarket tourists. Previously, under the communist-inspired, post-independence government of Julius Nyerere, the only visitors to tackle Tanzania’s heavyweight bureaucracy and the vagaries of the Tanzanian airlines’ schedules were backpackers and adventurers. Today, thanks to the current government’s intention to make Zanzibar a tourist destination to rival Mauritius and the Seychelles, there are more than 300 hotels, and the international airport is busy with European charter flights (mainly from Germany, Belgium, Italy and Spain) as well as planes from Dar es Salaam, Johannesburg, Muscat and Nairobi. There is also a fast catamaran from the mainland that takes less than an hour. Zanzibar has never been so accessible.
We flew to the archipelago from the Serengeti, had a week’s beach holiday, then hopped on a 12-seater Cessna to the Selous Game Reserve to camp in the wild. One morning I saw the sunrise from my bed in the Serengeti, ate fresh fruit salad for breakfast while watching giraffe, and by lunchtime I was in Zanzibar, in a bikini, with a glass of chilled South African Sauvignon Blanc in my hand and hot powdery sand between my toes.
When I last visited Zanzibar, in 2000, my family and I had sailed along the east coast of Africa to celebrate the Millennium and laid anchor in the harbour at Stone Town. After an hour of wandering around, my mother refused to stay a minute longer: the stench of the open drains, the fly-ridden market, the filthy, sewage-thick beach (which inspired David Livingstone to refer to the island as ‘Stinkibar’) made her nauseous. I wasn’t sorry to return to our boat. The menus at the few hotels that did exist were dull, the palace on the seafront was closed and in dire need of repair, and the shops sold only very basic commodities. It wasn’t exactly the exotic Zanzibar of my Arabian Nights dreams.
Just 11 years later, it’s hard to find a tour operator who doesn’t recommend the island as a luxurious Indian Ocean destination. It has always had white sand, blue seas and green forests (in 1856 the British explorer Richard Burton described it as a place where ‘earth, sea and sky all seemed wrapped in a soft and sensuous repose’) and some of the most beautiful dive sites on earth. Now it also has a handful of very smart boutique hotels, a few restaurants serving delicious seafood, serviceable tar roads that crisscross the island and, thanks to the Aga Khan Foundation, new sewerage drains in Stone Town.
Of course, not everything is perfect in paradise. The landscape is often blighted by hills of refuse, and many villagers still use the beaches as toilets, as they have done for centuries. Tourists ignore the fact that 96 per cent of the population is Muslim and continue to wear revealing clothing in public. The electricity supply can be erratic and many hotels have to rely on diesel generators. Water is becoming scarcer. And the divide between rich and poor is increasingly apparent: although locals on the whole benefit from tourism, the cost of one night in many of the hotels is more than the average Zanzibar earns in a year.
Happily, many hoteliers have realised that in order to survive and thrive on Zanzibar, they need to be sensitive to the needs of islanders, to employ locally, to provide education and training, and to buy from local producers. There are now cocktail bars and hotel villas staffed with trained butlers, chefs and nannies from Zanzibari communities, clearly relishing their jobs.
Architecturally the most opulent of the island’s new hotels, Baraza was styled on the palaces of the Omani sultans who ruled Zanzibar from the mid-1600s until the British took over in 1890. If it were not for the 70 hectares of bougainvillaea, palms, frangipani and jasmine and the wide, white beach, you could be in Oman. The low, white buildings, with arches, flat roofs, wide verandahs and barazas (built-in banquettes) are half-hidden by palm trees; the dining-room entrances are softened by acres of creamy fabric; verandahs echo with the whisk of old-fashioned brass-and-wood fans, and are lit at night by enormous brass lamps.
The owners, the Raguz family (who also own the neighbouring Palms and Breezes hotels), are the creative team behind Palacina Interiors in Nairobi, and all the wooden furniture, the Omani trunks, the brass lamps and the soft furnishings were made specially for the hotel.
The 30 one- and two-bedroom villas – family villas on one side, honeymooners’ on the other, each with a plunge pool – are in the gardens or along the 240-metre private stretch of Bwejuu beach. The spacious gold and white interiors feature big, egg-shaped baths, verandahs and sexy, curtained double daybeds.
The beach – fine, white and powdery – is the hotel’s greatest asset. It is extensive enough to walk along for hours, past fishing villages and other resorts and guesthouses, marvelling at the millions of seashells and the waves crashing hundreds of metres out to sea on a reef that protects the coast from Indian Ocean waves (and prevents sharks coming anywhere near the beaches).
The reef contains the only National Geographic dive site in East Africa, and the dive centre at neighbouring Breezes hotel can organise trips. Non-divers might take to the tennis courts, retire to the shady library, explore the beaches on bicycles or indulge in the most luxurious spa on the island, styled like an Arabian harem with golden mosaic floors and silk-canopied daybeds. Treatments run from basic facials to Thai massages administered by Noppapadon (known as Apple, ‘because people say my name long and I sweet’).
The hotel shop is a treat: a vast emporium stocked with crafts from all over East Africa, from Maasai jewellery to silk kaftans embroidered with shells. And parents will rejoice in the well-equipped kids’ club.
Downsides The sea urchins, which attach themselves to rocks all around the island and can be avoided only by wearing strong-soled rubber shoes while swimming; the inclusive wine (mainly a basic South African KWV) and uninspiring food (from pastas, salads and sandwiches for lunch to, one night, dry grilled lobster served with a broccoli, carrot and cauliflower kebab).
baraza-zanzibar.com. One-bedroom villas from €550 all-inclusive
This is one of the least expensive upmarket properties on the island. The best things about it are the 150-metre jetty, with loungers from which to watch dhows go by, and a spacious bar and restaurant serving excellent mezze platters and seafood. There is also a Healing Earth spa using indigenous African plants and oils. Villas, sleeping up to eight, will suit families who want more privacy; each has a plunge pool, kitchen and private butler,
as well as its own massage room.
Downsides There’s no beach: the nearest sandy stretch is a 15-minute walk away, and busy with hawkers. The architecture isn’t Zanzibari, and the dining rooms are too cavernous to feel comfortable.
essquehotels.com. Garden Suites from US$496 half-board.
Zanzibar
