Kizikula

Two childhood friends who grew up in Dubai, one with Zanzibari roots, used to dream of retiring to Zanzibar. Early in their careers, land came up on the sleepy coast at Kizimkazi, and they bought it. Decades later they are building what the hotel calls a few small humble guest houses and a pool. The few have reached nineteen rooms. The walls are pink coral limestone from close by, set against raw concrete, and the trees between them are tamarind and soursop, part of a permaculture farm that stocks the kitchen. Below, the shore is rock, not sand. A wooden stairway goes down into the water and so does a natural tunnel, and at low tide the sea pulls back and leaves the seabed bare. The pool sits above it all, twenty metres facing the ocean beside the bar, which the hotel says is the place for Kizimkazi's sunsets. The rooftops are kept for the stars.

Recommended for couples who would rather climb down into clear water than lie on sand, and for a family or friends travelling together, who can take the Villa: two rooms, Maryam and Latifa, with a living room and a rooftop between them, for four to six. Anyone who wants sand can drive half an hour to Paje. Boats leave from Kizimkazi village to look for dolphins, and a dhow goes out at sunset, in direct competition with the bar. Dinner comes off the farm, or from Karamba next door. About twenty minutes' walk away, the Kizimkazi Dimbani mosque carries a Kufic inscription dated 1107 and coral carved in the same years, so the village was building in coral nine centuries before the hotel.