Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania: Exploring Cocoa Beach and Oyster Bay Area

Hello fellow travelers,

In case you are new here, we are Will and Katy. We are a travel couple that is traveling around the world. We are currently staying in the heart of Dar Es Salaam, but in this travel blog we share with you our thoughts on exploring the Cocoa Beach/Oyster Bay part of town.

We started off by booking a tuk-tuk, through the Uber app. You can just flag one down on the side of the road, but we have found out that they charge us more in person than they would through the app.

We heard the Masaki area which includes: Cocoa Beach, Oyster Bay and The Slipway is supposed to be the nice part of town. Once arriving and walking around the area, it does seems like there are more luxury apartments, hotels, homes and restaurants in this part of town.

We completely forgot until we arrived at Cocoa Beach, but low tide happens right in the middle of the day! While low tide isn’t ideal to go swimming in, it is a really cool experience because you get to see all kinds of sea creatures that you normally wouldn’t see. I saw a sea cucumber, little crabs; I definitely would recommend walking slowly because as you walk they tend to scurry away. Because I didn’t have water shoes, my feet couldn’t handle walking around too much without getting poked by something, and unfortunately there was also broken glass pieces.

Overall it was very quiet, peaceful and serene. We enjoyed even just sitting and watching the locals enjoy their time at the beach. I admired how they could walk around the rough terrain without water shoes!

As we packed up to go, we decided to walk down the beach a little further. There were vendors and shops along the sand that we wanted to see. Most of them sold drinks, ice cream, bathing suits and swim tubes that you can rent to use in the water!

As we kept walking down, we saw a cliff, so we decided to go climb it to get a nice view. I am so glad we did! This view was so beautiful, from both sides! There was a music group up on the cliff filming some kind of music video, with this amazing backdrop behind it! We decided we definitely need to return to this spot at sunrise, when the tide is high, it will be even more amazing I am sure!

Afterwards we decided to walk around this part of town in search of a place where we will be able to celebrate New Years Eve. We walked to an area called The Slipway, which was filled with little shops, restaurants and a hotel right on the water. There were a lot more tourists here than where we are staying. We did ask around and found out that there will be fireworks in this area on New Years Eve and The Waterfront will have a NYE buffet dinner! Looks like we found our spot to celebrate New Year's Eve in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania! We ended our time getting an IPA on draft at Thai Kani before taking a tuk tuk back to downtown.

All in all, we had a great time exploring this part of town, we would recommend checking it out for yourself.

Until next time…

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