Day 5 – Zanzibar East Coast: The Beach as a Road

The scooter coming towards us along the wet sand was almost the twin of the one I keep at home. Mine is a red Vespa PX 200. This was an Indian copy, a Star Deluxe, and dozens of them that day, every colour, crossed the flats in both directions. At low tide the beach at Bwejuu stops being a beach and becomes a road, the widest and flattest road for miles, and the whole coast uses it: scooters, bicycles, people on foot going from one village to the next along the exposed sand.

We had tried to avoid this side of Zanzibar. In Stone Town I had been pleased with ourselves for choosing the city over the postcard, and now here we were on the postcard after all, a long white beach and turquoise water. Except the postcard turned out to be a working place, and getting there had been nothing like a resort transfer.

There is a new bus terminal in the middle of Stone Town, not fully open, and in any case it does not run to the east coast. For that, you go out to the edge of the city, to the bus station beside Mwanakwerekwe market, a big everyday market where Zanzibaris shop, and the departure point for anything heading south and east across the island. We went early, around eight, while the market was busy, and found a dala-dala. The road east is long and broken. We spent the morning packed into a small minibus among local passengers and, at one point, chickens, crossing villages and the edge of the Jozani forest reserve, with spice and fruit stalls passing the window, the island thinning out from town to plantation to bush.

Evergreen Bungalows, when we finally reached it, is a small eco place set up a few years ago by a Turkish man: independent cabins among the palms, a very good restaurant. The beach in front runs a long way, and the water shifts through turquoise and blue and paler blue as the tide moves, which here it does enormously, pulling the sea out a kilometre and bringing it back. It is very salty. After the density of the capital, it felt like another planet. This was the thing we had said we did not want, and I did not want to leave.

When the water goes out, it uncovers a kilometre of seabed, and the seabed is not empty. Some women were moving across it at low tide, bent to the sand, gathering shellfish and small sea creatures. A few hundred metres north, the seaweed farms begin, rows of it grown on lines strung between wooden stakes in the shallows. We walked out along the rows and talked with Asha, who kept working while we did. She had been harvesting seaweed since she was twelve, tying the young plants to the ropes, waiting for them to grow, cutting them, carrying them in to dry in the sun before they are sold, most of it for cosmetics. She did not stop for us, and I liked that she did not.

Out on the same flats were the dhows, the wooden sailing boats with the single triangular sail that have worked this coast for centuries, sitting on the sand now waiting for their water to come back. And the scooters, always the scooters, threading between all of it.

One man came by selling. Simba, who told us he was Maasai, in the beaded colours, set out bracelets and necklaces and anklets, belts, small carvings, sandals. He planted himself in front of our cabin that evening and again the next morning. He was insistent but not aggressive, and we did not buy anything; he took that without much complaint and stayed anyway.

We had lunch at Abdi’s Place, a palm-thatch shack with a terrace between Evergreen and the next lodge along, and it is the best food we ate on Zanzibar, though you need the afternoon for it. Abdi does everything himself. He cooks, he serves, he lays the tables, he keeps you talking, and the pace is whatever one man’s pace can be, so not everything on the menu was actually available, and nothing came quickly. I had rock lobster with rice, Lorena had a vegetable plate with chips, and we both had fresh coconut, the top cut off and a straw put in, and fried banana with chocolate to finish. Below the terrace, his son runs a small kite-surfing school, renting gear and taking people out onto the shallows, because this stretch of flat water is made for it.

Before dinner we stopped at a little shop near the beach kept by a village herbalist, and looked at what he sold: aloe, cloves, ginger, turmeric, other plants I did not know. He told us he had learned the plants from his father and his grandfather, and that the whole of it is knowing which part of a plant to use and how much.

In the evening there was a beach barbecue at Evergreen, octopus, and we ate it with the other guests as the light went down over the water. The tide was coming back in by then, taking back the road, covering the seaweed lines and the place where the gleaners had worked, until by dark the beach was only a beach again.

Practical Notes

Where I stayed

Evergreen Bungalows, Bwejuu, east coast of Zanzibar. https://www.zanevergreenbungalows.com/
What I paid: $156.50 for one night, breakfast and dinner included.
My take: A small, low-key eco place set up by a Turkish owner: separate cabins among the palms, a very good restaurant, genuinely warm staff. Comfortable rather than luxurious, and a good spot to stop and breathe before moving on. Bwejuu is quieter and more of a village than Paje further up the coast.

Where I ate

Abdi’s Place, on the beach between Evergreen and the next lodge, Bwejuu. Palm-thatch terrace, one man running the whole thing.
What I ate: rock lobster with rice (30,000 TZS), a vegetable main with chips (around 15,000), fresh coconut, and fried banana with chocolate (6,000). Roughly 20,000 to 30,000 TZS per person.
Worth knowing: the food is excellent and everything is cooked to order by Abdi alone, so it is slow and not everything listed is always available. Go when you have time, not when you are hungry and in a hurry.

Getting there

Stone Town to Bwejuu by dala-dala. The new terminal in Stone Town does not serve the east coast; you go out to the bus station by Mwanakwerekwe market, on the edge of the city, and pick up a dala-dala heading south-east.
What happened: we went to the market early, around 08:00, and took a public minibus, packed with locals (and some chickens), across the island past the Jozani forest. The road is long and rough.
What I paid: 2,000 TZS per person.