Tanzania Coast and Beach Holidays |
Most tourists who visit Tanzania choose to finish a safari with a visit to Zanzibar with its old capital Stone Town and beautiful beaches. But Tanzania has 1,400 KM. of coastline and the coast of mainland Tanzania unlike that of neighboring Kenya is very underdeveloped. Although little visited by tourists, it is extremely beautiful and wild. We can not claim to have visited the whole coast and there remains much to be explored but we have traveled the coast extensively.
North of Dar es Salaam there are a series of uninteresting small beach resorts which give way to a series of small fishing villages, interspersed between white sandy beaches. The most interesting town on the coast is undoubtedly Bagamoyo, the coast’s foremost slave port and the departure point for many expeditions into the interior. It is set on a beautiful bay fringed by mangroves and its laid back village-like atmosphere today belies its sinister past. There are many interesting colonial buildings still standing and the town makes a very interesting visit. Stay at the wonderful Lazy Lagoon close to Bagamoyo and relax in paradise.
North of Bagamoyo is the Saadani Game Reserve, the only costal Park on the East Coast of Africa. Beyond is the town of Tanga which is now Tanzania’s second largest port. It is not a town of great interest
Just south of Dar es Salaam is a beautiful area of white sand beaches stretching for miles. The area around Ras Kutani is particularly beautiful and little known.
Beyond, for those who wish to visit the far South coast, access is determined by the state of the vast Rufiji river delta, the largest mangrove forest in East Africa. This is a wild area rich in bio-diversity but fairly inhospitable.
Few make it beyond the Rufiji to the southern coast of Tanzania but for the explorer who wishes to venture on, there are the three Kilwas to be discovered These three settlements, Kilwa Kivinje, Kilwa Masoko and Kilwa Kisiwani, are of great historic interest and atmosphere. Kilwa Kisiwani is of particular interest having once been the most important trading port of the whole East Coast of Africa. The Sultanate of Kilwa was founded in 975 by a Shirazi trader, its riches were founded on the gold trade from Zimbabwe, but its fortunes ebbed and flowed with successive invasions and conquests with this island town periodically returning to being a simple fishing village, as it is today, between short periods of riches and fortune.
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The Coast