Nakupenda Sandbank

Nakupenda is a sandbank in the channel between Stone Town and Prison Island, off the west coast of Unguja, the main island of Zanzibar. It is a twenty-minute boat ride from the seafront and appears and disappears with the tide.

It is the standard Zanzibar day trip, and its appeal is precisely its impermanence: at low water it is a clean crescent of white sand in open sea, and a few hours later it is underwater. Operators time the trip around that window, usually combining it with Prison Island, where a colony of Aldabra giant tortoises has lived since a gift from the Seychelles in the 1919s.

The sand is fine and white, the water shallow and warm on the sheltered side, deeper and running on the other. There is no reef immediately at the bank; snorkelling is done on the way. Because the bank has no rock and no vegetation, its shape changes constantly and its position on a chart is approximate. Zanzibar's tidal range is large enough that the same effect governs the main island's east coast, where the sea withdraws hundreds of metres twice a day and seaweed farmers work the exposed flats. Nakupenda is the extreme version of an everyday local pattern.

Nothing is built and nothing can be. Operators bring shade, chairs and a grilled lunch, set it up, and take it away before the tide arrives. The name means "I love you" in Swahili, which is marketing rather than tradition, and the bank is called several other things locally depending on who is running the boat.

A sandbar that exists for a few hours and then does not. Everything you use on it arrives by boat and leaves the same way, the shade is a rented umbrella, and the sun off white sand and water at midday is punishing. Go for the low tide, not for the day.