Amani Boutique Hotel

Amani is on Paje beach, on the south-east coast of Unguja, the main island of Zanzibar, so you fly into Abeid Amani Karume International Airport outside Zanzibar Town and cross the island by road, about an hour, on a private transfer we arrange to meet you off the plane.

Coming from a northern Tanzania safari, daily scheduled light-aircraft flights from the Serengeti airstrips, and from Arusha itself, reach Zanzibar in the afternoon; the aircraft take soft bags only, fifteen kilograms a person. Off that flight you reach Paje in the mid to late afternoon. From Dar es Salaam it is a twenty-minute hop, with several flights a day.

If you would rather not spend the middle of the day on a flight with several stops, we can put in a private charter, typically a Cessna Caravan or a Pilatus PC-12, from your safari airstrip straight to Zanzibar at the hour that suits you, and the same road transfer takes you on to Paje.

One piece of paperwork to know about: Zanzibar requires every foreign visitor to hold its own inbound travel insurance from the Zanzibar Insurance Corporation, bought through the Zanzibar government's online portal before you arrive, and no other policy is accepted in its place. We flag it in your travel documents so it is done before you fly.

Yes. TravelHealthPro, the UK's official travel health service, rates all of Tanzania below 1,800 metres as high risk for malaria, naming Zanzibar in that line, and recommends antimalarial tablets for it. The American CDC draws the same boundary on its page for Tanzania and Zanzibar, listing every area below 1,800 metres.

Paje is a beach at sea level, so it sits well inside that advice, and neither source makes a seasonal distinction, so it applies in the dry months as much as in the rains, however fresh the sea breeze feels in the evening.

We are travel planners, not medical professionals, so we do not make recommendations about tablets. Which ones suit you, and how they sit with anything else you take, is a question for your own doctor or a travel clinic, and if Zanzibar follows a safari it is worth taking the whole route to one appointment so the two are considered together.

The non-medical part is simple: long sleeves and repellent from dusk, at dinner by the beach most of all.

No, not as a family holiday: Amani is an adults-only hotel. It is made for couples and for friends travelling together, with fourteen double rooms, each for two, in garden-view and ocean-view versions, and it sits on a quieter stretch of Paje beach, so the evenings are calm rather than lively.

For a family with children we would steer you to one of the Zanzibar beach hotels that welcome them, and we are glad to suggest the right one once we know the ages. If there are older teenagers in your party, tell us their ages at enquiry and we will confirm with the hotel before anything is booked.

Not at every hour, because Paje is a tidal coast. The hotel looks out over a wide, shallow lagoon sheltered by a reef offshore, and twice a day the tide drains it back towards the reef, leaving sand flats and pools where a few hours earlier there was water to swim in.

Sea swimming is best in the few hours around high tide, and because the tide turns a little later each day, the swimming window moves through the day over the course of a week: an early swim at the start of your stay can become an afternoon one by the end.

The tides run biggest around the full and new moon, when the water goes furthest out and comes furthest in. The pool, facing the sea, covers the hours when it is out, and we can give you the tide times for your dates before you travel.

Low tide has its own pleasures. You can walk a long way out across the flats towards the reef, in reef shoes for the coral, and women from the village tend their seaweed farms on the exposed sand. The same shallow lagoon, with its steady side-onshore wind, is why Paje is such a popular place to learn to kitesurf, with the best of it from mid to high tide.

Paje is an active beach, and Amani sits on a quieter stretch of it, a walk along the sand from the village with its beach clubs, restaurants and kite beach.

Kitesurfing lessons for every level, from a first session to advanced riding, are arranged with a kite school nearby and taught in the shallow lagoon, and diving is with a PADI five-star centre on Paje beach, with reef dives and courses from beginner upwards. For slower days there is the pool facing the sea, a small spa for massages, and free wifi throughout the hotel.

The day trips we arrange from Paje include Jozani Forest, in Jozani Chwaka Bay National Park, one of the last strongholds of the red colobus monkey, walked with a naturalist guide.

A boat out from Kizimkazi on the south coast to look for the dolphins that feed in the shallows there. A day on a traditional dhow, sailing and snorkelling. A spice farm tour. And a day in Stone Town, on the far side of the island, for its markets and alleys.

For settled weather, June to October and mid-December to February. June to October is the cooler, drier half of the year, with daytime highs around 30 degrees, the least rain of the year in July, August and September, and the south-east kusi wind blowing steadily across Paje.

From mid-December the lighter north-east kaskazi takes over and the island is at its hottest, with highs of 33 or 34 degrees. The long rains fall from March to May, with April by far the wettest month, and there is a second, shorter wet spell in November and December.

The sea stays above 24 degrees all year, and while the two wind seasons are the reason kitesurfers come, for everyone else the breeze takes the edge off the heat.

Pack light cotton or linen, swimwear, a wide hat and high-factor sun cream, reef shoes for walking the flats at low tide, and a light long-sleeved layer for the evenings and the mosquitoes.

Zanzibar is almost entirely Muslim, so bring something that covers shoulders and knees for the village, Stone Town and the spice farms. If you are flying in from a safari on the light aircraft, all of it has to go in a soft bag within fifteen kilograms.