We spent 10 days at this beautiful lodge. The rooms are located in a beautiful garden with a lot of privacy. It's very clean and the beds are beautifully made with flowers, so romantic! There are mosquito nets in front of the windows, over the beds and a nice veranda to sit on. The restaurant is decorated in an arabic african style and has a beautiful view over the bay and an old ruin. In the evening you hear the bushbabys and sometimes the can see them in the trees near the restaurant, they are so cute! The food is excellent! Homecooked breakfast bread and Fresh seafood everyday bought from the local fishermen. If you don't like fish they'll cook another dish for you. Nothing is too much! The staff is really friendly, helpful and the hosts give a such a warm welcome that it makes you feel like you're part of the family.

This lodge is an excellent place to start your trips around the island! They organize all kinds of trips for reasonable prices and again, everything is possible! If you want to relax you can enjoy the beach in the shade or in the sun.

We absolutely loved it and hope to come back one day.

This is a really special place. Zanzibar is full of beautiful hotels, brimming with stunning beaches, and generally everyone is super friendly wherever you go, but the owners of Mangrove Lodge are really lovely people, and made our stay exceptional. We were doing our holiday in a bit of an unusual way - cycling from place to place, buying food from the market and cooking on the beach. We had stayed at Mangrove right at the start of our fortnight, and liked it so much we returned, along with 4 fish, and a basket of vegetables. Not only was Haji (sp?) and his wife not at all put out that we had brought our own food, they helped us build a fire on the beach, allowed us to prep the fish in their kitchen and joined us for a drink after dinner along with their ADORABLE children. It was our last night, totally perfect, and it was almost unbearable to leave. GO THERE!

Hello,

We just come back from Mangrove Lodge, and we don't have enough words to tell you how wonderful it was!!! This ecolodge is situated between two marvellous beaches, the rooms are big and beautiful, very clean, the romantic beds covered with fresh flowers... There are only ten bungalows, in total 20 rooms, so it is very small and intimate!
Fresh food is cooked every day from the fishermen's captures of the afternoon.
Breakfast is the best we've ever had, with eggs, pancakes, fresh fruits, local pastries, nutella, local jam...
... And it is much cheaper and nicer than the big hotels!!!

Haji, the owner, is so friendly and he will help you to organise nice and cheap excursions around the island.
The situation is perfect because you are 20 min from Stonetown and all the excursions leaving to Prison Island, Chumbe, etc, 5 min from Spicetour, and not too far from Josani forest (max 1h)...

If you want to feel like a guest, even a friend, more thant a client, go straight to Mangrove Lodge!

Thank you so much Haji for our wonderful stay with you!

Maud and Dimitri

We spent a week at Mangrove and we enjoyed every minute of it. The rooms are spacious and clean, beautifully designed and decorated, fresh flowers around after each cleaning ... the yard, just marvelous, large and filled with trees of all sorts, i wish i learned them all. The bush babies are there too, just drop a banana or two or hang around in the restaurant area and they will come trying to steal the sugar.
But this is not the best of Mangrove. The people there will really make you feel like home. Haji, the owner, he was there for us every single moment. We came as guests and we left as friends. We didn't book any activities in advance, just hoped for some advice from the lodge. And we got more than that. Haji put us in contact (no extra charge) with people at the spice farms, at the south-east coast for the dolphins tour, etc.
We spent lovely evenings with him teaching us Bao, the African game or chatting about the country and it's people, customs, foods, about the project he is trying to start, helping the village nearby to progress by inviting his guests on a volunteering basis to share knowledge with the locals.
And last but not least, i think the west coast is a much better idea than the east. I know it's a standard, you go stay in Stone Town for the buzz, then move to east for the relaxing part. We've been driving ourselves there and i must admit i am happy we decided to only visit it. The landscape is pretty depressing and artificially touristic compared to the west coast. We had the best beach time at Mangrove, in a small isolated strip of land (meaning, no beach boys to bother us selling their stuff), we were close to all the interesting spots of the island (Jozani forest, dolphin coast, etc) and we benefited from a much more generous nature than the east has to offer.
All in all, Mangrove was our Zanzibari home. We'll be going back, that's for sure.