Zanzibar City - Sea Cliff Resort and Spa, a 40-minute trip north from Zanzibar airport, is balm for jangled nerves and overwound sensibilities.
After fleeing the bite of a highveld winter and half an year of inexorable, insatiable deadlines, Sea Cliff offers an opportunity to hide, recharge and emerge refreshed and ready for the next six months.
There is really no need to leave the 120-bedroom resort with its two infinity swimming pools, water sports centre, with kayaks to scuba diving, and even a 9-hole golf course, clubhouse, driving range and practice greens.
Personally, I believe Winston Churchill had it right when he described golf as a good walk ruined, but there’s no denying the beauty of the course which merges seamlessly with the rest of the resort, which includes a spa and a gym.
Much like my time at university and my relationship with the library there, the gym here exists only as a guide point to where everything else is.
It’s easy to lose days at Sea Cliff; they blend into variants of swimming, sun bathing, snorkelling, sundowners, sleeping – and, if you’re tired of your own company – sightseeing.
There’s a TV in every room, but it never has to go on, there’s wi-fi throughout the resort which offers the opportunity to download a cheap thriller onto your Kindle to read on your hammock overlooking the magical Indian Ocean.
Zanzibar is tropical, which means you’re going to be faced with minimum temperatures of 240C rising to 28, or even 30 when South Africa is in the throes of winter. If you’re lucky there might be a sea breeze and a torrential downpour but afterwards the sun comes out brighter and more brilliant than before.
If you get tired of keeping within the confines of the resort and its tennis and squash courts or riding horses through the waves at low tide, you can walk out onto the 600m beach at low tide and watch the artisanal fishermen fix their boats before the next high tide,as women and children search for shops and harvest seaweed. Then it’s back to the resort. You’ve walked enough to justify a mid-morning beer – and there are three in Tanzania that are definitely worth repeating – before getting back into the groove of totally unwinding.
Pole Pole, they say in KiSwahili, slowly, slowly. I believe it’s what the guides tell the climbers going up Kilimanjaro, but the eponymous beer goes one better; “if you can’t climb it, drink it”. Cheers.
Saturday Star