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Getting to The Nest

You cross the whole of Zanzibar to get here: the airport lies on the west coast, beside Stone Town, and Paje faces east, an hour's drive away. Going back to the old town means retracing that same way. Scroll down to cross the island.

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Zanzibar airport

1 h · private transfer

You land at ZNZ, Abeid Amani Karume airport, on the island's west coast. The Nest arranges the private transfer: a car meets the flight and drives to the door of the house in an hour. All it takes is your flight number when you book.

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Across the island

coast to coast on a single road

The road leaves the airport heading east and does not meet the sea again until Paje: villages, coconut groves and spice gardens you smell before you see them. Two thirds of the way across it runs through Jozani Forest, the island's only national park and home of the red colobus, a monkey found nowhere else on earth.

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Arrival · Paje

between the palms and the lagoon

The road ends on the east coast, at Paje: white sand and a flat turquoise lagoon closed off by the reef, the water that makes this beach a kitesurfing spot. The Nest stands on that same beach, twelve units among palms and forest, facing the lagoon. Here the clock is the tide, which twice a day lays the whole lagoon bare and fills it again.

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Stone Town

1 h · back along the same road

To reach Stone Town you retrace almost the whole way: the same road that brought you from the airport, coast to coast once more, into the old city, a World Heritage Site. Carved wooden doors, Darajani market, the Forodhani gardens and the eleven o'clock cardamom coffee. Best arrived at dawn, before the heat.

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Coast to coast

An hour by road from the airport to the lagoon, and the same hour back to Stone Town. What waits at the end of the road is on the house's own page, and dates take a single line to ask.