Travel reviews by Mrs D from Cheltenham

"I greatly enjoyed my stay at Fumba Beach Lodge. There is a delightful Butterfly and Wildlife Walk area to watch birds, butterflies, elephant shrews etc. I appeared to be the only person using it as I never met anybody else there and went at least twice a day. I saw various species of butterflies, a pair of crowned hornbills perched on a tree, elephant shrews, sunbirds, lizards, monkeys, a goshawk?, yellow-rumped tinkerbird. The grounds in general are good for watching the wildlife there, such as the resident monkeys, red colobus monkey, bushbaby, squirrels, sunbirds, lizards, and butterflies. There is a particular shrub which lots of beautiful butterflies descended on to feed at.

I was unable to go on Fumba's Dive Centre's snorkelling trip as it was booked up on both days I wanted to go. However, one of the dive centre staff arranged for me to go on a snorkelling trip with Safari Blue and one of the Fumba staff very kindly gave up his day off to accompany me as my guide and chaperon! The snorkelling was excellent and we had a superb lunch at Kwale Island.

The Lodge arranged for me to go on an excursion to the Jozani Forest, which was very enjoyable, but I would have liked to spend a longer time there."

"I had a very enjoyable stay at Unguja Lodge. The grounds were good for watching birds, lizards, elephant shrews, monkeys, a red colobus monkey, and hearing rock hyraxes. I was accompanied on my walks round the grounds to watch birds by one of the security guards, who was a good spotter and charming companion. These included plenty of sparrows, some sunbirds, golden weavers, yellow-rumped tinkerbird, lilac-breasted roller, bulbuls, and a fabulous mangrove kingfisher which dived into the swimming pool and perched on a tree above.

On the beach wading in the pools at low tide were a whimbrel, crab plover, greater sandplovers, dimorphic egrets, sanderlings.

I had two snorkelling trips, one to Nici reef (excellent) and the other to Kizidi reef (good).

I also went on a Spice Tour, which was very interesting and informative."

"Beautiful hotel with friendly staff. Dinner was a slight disappointment as the grilled fish was overcooked but the salad accompanying it was fresh and tasty.

One of the staff was supposed to give me a call at midnight as I was getting an early morning flight, but he forgot or was himself asleep. Fortunately I had an alarm clock and woke up anyway."