Tanzania
Fanjove Private Island
Green turtles nest beside a lighthouse whose ground floor serves dinner.
The lighthouse keeps working, but its ground floor now serves dinner: a sand island in the Songo Songo archipelago, solar-powered, a handful of bandas, and green turtles nesting on the same beaches guests walk barefoot.
Fanjove is a tiny coral-sand island run at the scale its reef can sustain: solar power, a short row of beach bandas, and the nineteenth-century lighthouse converted into the open-air restaurant serving the day's line-caught fish in Swahili-Western style. Green turtles nest on the beaches, with evening patrols monitoring the nests, the reef starts at the sand, and the season runs June to mid-March, closed for the long rains. Ocean, lighthouse, turtles; that is the entire island, and enough.
Couple
Fanjove suits couples seeking organised seclusion, with reef and dhow plans allowed to change with the sea.
- Green turtles come ashore to nest on the island's own beaches.
- A nineteenth-century lighthouse serves as the open-air restaurant.
- Solar power and a short row of bandas are the entire footprint.
- The reef begins where the sand ends.
The lighthouse's open-air tables serve the day's line-caught fish.
Curries run mixed Swahili-Western, following what the boats bring in.
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