Kendwa Beach, Zanzibar

Where to stay at Kendwa

Kendwa in four lines

• Tide, about a metre. The northern tip barely moves. You can swim at any hour of any day, which is the whole reason to be here.
• The widest sand in Zanzibar. Noticeably broader and whiter than Nungwi, two kilometres north.
• Quiet for twenty six nights a month. And emphatically not for the other two, when the full moon party runs until dawn.
• $70 to $500 a night. The northern tip charges for the swimming, and high season roughly doubles it. What the upper half of that range buys is set out in the top end of the island.

What the full moon party actually is

Once a month, Kendwa Rocks hosts a beach party that has been running since long before Instagram found it. It draws people from across the island and a fair number from the mainland, and it goes until dawn.

For one night the beach is not quiet. If that is what you came for it is genuinely good, and if it is not, the dates are published well in advance and the rest of the month is unaffected.

The rest of Kendwa's evenings are beach bars and dinner. It is not a nightlife coast in the way Nungwi is.

Why the sand is wider here

Kendwa faces slightly more west than Nungwi does, sheltered by the point, and the sand accumulates rather than being scoured away.

The practical effect is a beach you can walk along for a kilometre at any tide, with room between the sunbeds. On a coast where space is the scarce thing, that is most of the appeal.

Where to eat, and the walk to Nungwi

Kendwa has perhaps a dozen places to eat and most of them belong to hotels. That is the honest limitation of staying here: you will eat where you sleep more often than you would in Nungwi.

What the hotels do well is grilled fish, because the boats land it two hundred metres away. What they do less well is variety, and by night four the menus start to repeat.

The fix is the walk. At low tide you can go along the sand to Nungwi in about twenty minutes, which opens up thirty more restaurants and the only real choice on the northern tip. Coming back after dark, take a taxi rather than the beach, which costs three or four dollars and removes the one genuine risk on this coast.

Getting here, and getting out

An hour and a quarter to an hour and a half from the airport, forty to sixty dollars for the vehicle. There is no shortcut and the last twenty minutes are the slowest, through villages with speed bumps every few hundred metres.

Once here, most people stop moving. Kendwa is a beach and a strip of hotels, and the things to do from it are boat trips that pick you up. Stone Town is ninety minutes away, which makes it a full day rather than an afternoon.

For anything on the east coast, budget two hours each way. This is the practical argument for splitting a longer stay between the two coasts rather than driving across the island twice.

What the beach is like through the day

Mornings are the best of it. The sand is raked, the light is soft and there is almost nobody out before eight.

By eleven the sunbeds are taken and the boat sellers are working the beach. It is not aggressive, and a clear no ends it, but it is constant between about ten and four.

Late afternoon empties out again, and the last two hours before sunset are why people book the north coast. The sun goes down over open water and the whole beach turns out for it.

Kendwa compared with Nungwi

Two kilometres apart, the same tidal range, and a genuinely different week. This is the only comparison that matters once you have chosen the north.

They are ten minutes apart by taxi, so you can sleep at one and eat at the other. Read the Nungwi guide alongside this one, and north versus east if the coast is still undecided.

Should you stay at Kendwa

Questions people ask about Kendwa