Book Into a Beach Hotel and Get a Piece of Paradise

Think of all the beach holiday clichés that make creative editors' hair stand on end – white powdery sand, sparkling blue water, palm-fringed beaches, beautiful coral reefs... they're all a reality in Tanzania.

 

East Africa's largest country boasts the Ngorongoro crater (a world heritage site), Mount Kiliminjaro, the Serengeti and Zanzibar. It's the latter that will get the attention of the water babies as well as the sedentary travellers, who really want nothing more than to play in the water or just lie and look at it.

Choose a beach hotel as a base to explore the islands around Tanzania, like Zanzibar and Pemba, which offer some of the world's best diving and snorkelling sites for admirers of the marine world.

Southern Sun Dar es Salaam is not a beach hotel in terms of location, but it does provide a central access point from which to explore the islands.

Head for one of the tropical beaches like Coco Beach at Oyster Bay or drive a short distance to the Marine Reserve, which incorporates the islands of Bongoyo, Mbudya, Pangavini and Fungu Yasini.

If you're swimming, snorkelling or fishing at Kunduchi beach, venture into the baobab trees and look for the Kunduchi ruins of the old Swahili town. There you'll be able to explore a 16th-century mosque and Arabic graves from the 18th and 19th centuries. Bongoyo beach is rated the best for beauty though.

A beach hotel can offer access to some unconventional tourist activities, like a cruise in a wooden dhow to the well-known Pange sand bank where a stint of snorkelling will reveal an unforgettable array of stunning clown and parrot fish.

It's got the makings of a perfect holiday. If you're after the ideal vacation, when relaxation is guaranteed, you can't go far wrong with a beach hotel experience.