Paje Beach, Zanzibar

Where to stay at Paje

Paje in four lines

• The wind, from June to September and December to March. Fifteen to twenty five knots, side onshore, and the best beginner kitesurfing lagoon in East Africa.
• Tide, 3 to 4 metres. The lagoon empties for hours. That is what makes it a kite classroom and what makes it awkward to swim in.
• The one east coast beach with an actual strip. Bars, coworking, restaurants, and other people, which no other beach on this coast has.
• $40 to $200 a night. Cheaper than the north, dearer than Jambiani, and busiest in August.

The tide is the whole story here

Twice a day the sea walks two to five hundred metres out across a flat of sand and coral, and twice a day it comes back. Swimming happens in the window around high water, roughly two hours either side, and that window moves fifty minutes later every day.

Arriving without knowing this is what generates the disappointed reviews. Knowing it turns the day into a rhythm: swim in the window, walk the flats when the water has gone, and watch the seaweed farmers work the lines that appear when the lagoon drains.

The shallow lagoon is also what makes the kitesurfing work. Falling in waist deep water over sand, with no reef under you, is why beginners come here rather than somewhere with better swimming. How the tide works covers the mechanics.

Eating and drinking

Paje has the best food scene on the east coast, which is a low bar cleared comfortably. Beach restaurants serve grilled seafood, decent pizza and a surprising amount of vegetarian food, at ten to twenty dollars a head.

The village behind the beach has local places at a third of that, and they are where the kite instructors eat.

Evenings are genuinely social here in a way the rest of the east coast is not. Several beach bars run until late and the crowd is a mix of visitors, instructors and people who came for a month and stayed.

Learning to kite, practically

The standard beginner package is nine hours across three days and costs three hundred and fifty to five hundred dollars. That gets most people riding, though not all, and the schools are honest about it.

Lessons happen at mid tide, which means the timetable moves through the week with the water. A school that books you for ten in the morning every day for three days has not thought about it.

Look for two students per instructor at most, a radio helmet, and a recognised certification. Cheaper schools cut the first of those, and it roughly doubles how long the course takes.

What to do when the wind does not blow

It happens, particularly in the shoulder months, and Paje is well placed for it. Jozani forest is twenty minutes inland, The Rock is twenty five minutes south, and Jambiani is a four kilometre walk down the sand.

The low tide flats are their own thing. Walking out at the bottom of the tide, past the seaweed lines and the stranded starfish, is an hour that people remember longer than they expect.

There is also a good deal of nothing, which after three days of being dragged across a lagoon by a kite is not the worst outcome.

Staying longer than a week

Paje is the island's remote working capital and it is set up for it. Two or three coworking spaces run their own connections with backup power, and several guesthouses do monthly rates.

The economics work out well. A month here costs less than a week in the north, and the community of people doing the same thing is what keeps them coming back.

The one caution is that it is not quiet. If you wanted the east coast for emptiness, Jambiani four kilometres south is the same beach without the scene.

The verdict

The village that turned into a workplace

Paje has quietly become the place people come to work from. There are coworking spaces with their own connections and backup power, cafes that expect you to sit for four hours, and enough long stay accommodation to support it.

That gives it a different texture from the resort coasts. The bars have regulars, the kite schools know each other, and a lot of the people on the beach in February were also there in November.

It also means it is not quiet. If the appeal of the east coast was emptiness, Jambiani four kilometres south does the same tide with a quarter of the noise.

Where Paje is, and how to get there

Halfway down the south east coast, about fifty kilometres from the airport and an hour by road. It is one of the shorter transfers on the island, which is worth knowing when the north takes ninety minutes.

A taxi runs forty to fifty dollars for the vehicle. The transfer page has the rates for every coast and the point about there being no meter.

Dala dala run from Stone Town for about a dollar and take rather longer. They work if you are travelling light and not at all if you have a suitcase.

Once you are here, Paje is walkable end to end in twenty minutes. Jambiani is four kilometres south along the sand, which is a pleasant hour at low tide and a five dollar taxi otherwise.

Things to do in Paje

Kitesurfing is the headline and it is genuinely world class for learning, because the lagoon is waist deep over sand for hundreds of metres.

Beyond it, the low tide walk out onto the flats is the thing people remember. The seaweed farms come out of the water, the tidal pools fill with starfish and urchins, and the whole landscape changes twice a day.

Jozani forest is twenty minutes inland and takes two hours. The Rock Restaurant is twenty five minutes south. Stone Town is an hour away and works as a day trip.

There is also swimming, in the window around high water, and a good deal of sitting still. Paje does not have a long list of attractions and nobody comes here expecting one.

Where to stay in Paje

Three bands. Guesthouses back from the beach at thirty to fifty dollars, which is where the long stay crowd lives. Beachfront places at eighty to a hundred and fifty. And a handful of smarter hotels above that.

Almost everything is low rise and small. There are no large resorts here, which is a large part of the character and the reason the village still feels like one.

The thing worth checking is the distance to the sand, because Paje spreads back from the beach further than the photographs suggest, and a hundred metres of hot road matters at two in the afternoon.

The wider guide sets out how the coasts compare on price.

How long to spend here

Three or four nights if you are passing through and want a taste of the east coast. That is enough for the tide to make sense, one boat trip and a walk to Jambiani.

A week if you are learning to kite, because the standard course is nine hours across three days and you will want time on the water afterwards.

A month if you are working, which is what a fair number of people here are doing. Guesthouses do monthly rates well below the nightly price.

What does not work is one night. The tide window moves fifty minutes a day, and a single night can easily mean arriving and leaving on an empty lagoon.

What Paje costs

Cheaper than the northern tip and dearer than Jambiani, ten minutes south, and forty minutes from the boats at Kizimkazi. See also a week here for sixty dollars a day. August is the peak, because that is when the wind is.

Book the kite school before the room in August, because the instructors run out before the beds do. Full details in kitesurfing in Zanzibar, and the whole week is costed in the budget page.

Questions people ask about Paje