ZANZIBAR VACATION

he Zanzibar Archipelago is an awesome world class beach destination! Check out our itineraries for Zanzibar, Pemba and Mafia Island and read all you need to know about these tropical islands. You can easily combine a Zanzibar vacation with a safari on the

he Zanzibar Archipelago is an awesome world class beach destination! Check out our itineraries for Zanzibar, Pemba and Mafia Island and read all you need to know about these tropical islands. You can easily combine a Zanzibar vacation with a safari on the mainland

Zanzibar might be one of the best beach honeymoon destinations of the world… beautiful white sandy beaches and coral reefs, comfortable accommodations, and transparent blue sea, like in the movies. And did you know? Zanzibar is located only 15 miles off the coast of Tanzania. Which means that you can quickly and easily fly to the Tanzanian mainland and go on an amazing wildlife safari, meet the Tanzanian population, discover their culture and see a lot of animals. This is your chance to meet the Big 5! Safari and beach holiday: is this your dream vacation?

Imagine a dream holiday to the tropical island Zanzibar. This bounty island is a paradise, offering the world’s most beautiful beaches and coral reefs. Miles and miles of white sandy beaches sprinkled with palm trees, surrounded by the clear azure waters of the Indian Ocean. Apart from laid-back beach life, Zanzibar also has a colorful culture and history. Stone Town is well worth a visit. This fascinating old city offers so many nice markets, restaurants and historical sightseeing’s.

Zanzibar Island is part of the Zanzibar archipelago, together with Pemba and Mafia and many smaller islands. These islands are also called the Spice Islands because of their rich history in the spice trade and many spice plantations. Great beach destinations to wash off the dust after your safari.

Zanzibar beaches

Zanzibar offers the world’s most beautiful beaches. Soft white sandy beaches surrounded by colourful coral reefs and the crystal clear waters of the Indian Ocean. Zanzibar island has about 25 beaches, sprinkled with fishing villages. Should you stay north or rather choose the south or east coast of Zanzibar?

North:

Zanzibar’s best beaches are on the north and east coast of the island, all with crystal white sand and colourful coral reefs. Nungwi and Kendwa are one of the most popular beaches since they do not have to deal with high and low tides. It has a chilled atmosphere with numbers of restaurants, bars and accommodation options. So if you seek real peace and privacy you should visit another part of the island (like the east or south). The north is home to villages like Uroa, Pongwe, Kiwengwa, Nungwi and Kendwa.

East:

At the east coast of the island you will find the most idyllic beaches. Along the eastern coastline runs a beautiful coral reef, a top world spot for snorkelling and diving. You can immerse yourself in the abundance of marine life, such as sea horses, turtles and many tropical fish. The beaches at this east coast are very tidal. During low tide you can take a walk on the beach and enjoy the ocean views. If you love wind- or kite surfing this is the right place for you. Matemwe beach is the longest and one of the most beautiful ones at this site of the island. Like in the north, there is a wealth of accommodation options.

South-East:

This part of the island is known for its long stretch of soft sandy beaches. It is the best spot on the island for sailing or kite- and windsurfing, thanks to steady winds. Hop on a traditional wooden sailboat (dhow) and sail the ocean, or go swimming with dolphins at Kizimkazi (south). Here you will find little villages like Jambiani, Paje and Bwejuu. These small fishing village have a nice timeless atmosphere with friendly people. One of our favourite villages is Jambiani. Check out why we think Jambiani is the place to be in Zanzibar.

South-West:

The south west coast is a bit more remote with fewer lodges and deserted beaches. The beaches in west and south of Zanzibar are less popular, although there are some beautiful beaches with gentle tides. If you visit the south, do not forget to go to Menia Bay Conservation Area. This is a spectacular underwater world for divers. The western coast is home to the fascinating old Stone Town, the cultural and historical centre of Zanzibar.

Exursions during your Zanzibar holiday

The tropical island of Zanzibar is known for its beautiful white sandy beaches and coral reefs. But Zanzibar does not only offer laid-back beach life and watersport activities but also a colorful culture and history. The opportunities are endless, there is a lot to do for everyone on Zanzibar. We selected for you the best Zanzibar excursions.

Spice tour

Visit a spice farm and learn how spices, herbs and fruits grow and used as medicine.

Kite surfing

Thanks to its steady sideshore winds, Zanzibar is an ideal spot for wind- or kitesurfing, especially the beaches at Paje, Kiwengwa and Nungwi.

Mountainbike tour

If you like some exercise and adventure go on a biking tour to explore the island. It offers you a nice insight in the daily way of life and beautiful nature.

Walking tour in Stonetown

The old Stone Town is the historical centre of Zanzibar and an amazing mix of Food lovers and culture enthusiasts can visit interesting cultural places like Sultan’s Palace, the House of Wonders, the Slave Market and Darajani or Forodhani food markets. You can ever dinner at Freddie Mercury’s former house, who was born in Zanzibar.

Prison Island

Visit the deserted island that was once used as a place where slaves were detained. Nowadays Prison Island is a place to relax at the lovely white beach. It is ideal for snorkeling, swimming or sunbathing. You can also see the old prison ruins and about hundred giant land tortoise.

Safari Blue

Enjoy the natural beauty of Zanzibar on a traditional wooden sailboat (dhow). Visit 3 beautiful island where you can swim, snorkel and enjoy an delicious barbecue. Another popular snorkeling trip is to Mnemba Atoll, one of the most beautiful snorkel spots in Zanzibar.

Jozani Forest

Go on a walk through the last indigenous forest and mangroves on Zanzibar. The huge palms in this forest are impressive and you will see lots of monkeys like the rare Red Colobus Monkeys.

Restaurant The Rock

This restaurant is built on a rock in the ocean. An awesome place to eat and enjoy the views.

Chumbe Island

This uninhabited small coral island is a true snorkeling paradise. It is the first private marine park in the world and has only 7 beautiful eco-friendly bungalows, surround by pristine nature.

Best time to visit Zanzibar

The most popular time to visit Zanzibar is during the dry season, from June to October and from December to February. However, Zanzibar Island is a great beach destination all-year round. Even during the wet season (mid-March, April, May, November) it is beautiful, since the rain showers don’t last much longer than 30 minutes and the temperatures still remain around 28 C. February is the hottest month in Zanzibar (average 28 C), while July (average 24 C) is the coldest. Given its tropical climate, it’s always a good time to visit Zanzibar.

Zanzibar Hotels

Zanzibar offers a wealth of lodges, hotels and resorts. It has everything ranging from basic accommodation to ultra-luxury. Tanzania Specialist knows most of the accommodation Zanzibar so you can always contact us for advice. We prefer the personal atmosphere of the small bed & breakfast lodges on the island. The staff is so friendly and will do everything you make sure you have a great time. Another benefit of bed & breakfasts is that you can explore other restaurants and bars during the day and evening. There are so many great places to eat and have a drink, with beautiful views over the ocean and a great ambiance.

Zanzibar is a semi-autonomous archipelago off the coast of Tanzania consisting of Zanzibar Island (locally, Unguja), Pemba Island and many smaller islands. Zanzibar island itself is approximately 90 km long and 40 km wide. There is a variety of public and private transport. After your Kilimanjaro climb or after your exciting private safari in Tanzania, we will assist you and arrange all your transfers in Zanzibar for you to fully enjoy your stay. We can also arrange daytrips and further activities to discover the tropical paradise.

Travel times & distances: (times can vary depending on exact location, traffic & other events)

Zanzibar Ferry Terminal to Stonetown: Walking distance

Zanzibar Airport to Stonetown – 20-30 minutes by car

Stonetown to North (Nungwi): 2 hours

Stonetown to East (Paje): 1 hour

Stonetown to East (Michamvi): 1.5 hours

Stonetown to North-East (Matemwe): 2 hours

Stonetown to South-East (Jambiani): 2 hours

Stonetown to South: 2.5 hours

Taxis in Zanzibar:

Taxis are the most comfortable way of travelling in Zanzibar. We recommend to always negociate about prices before starting to drive to your destination. Tanzania Horizon will assist you to arrange all your travels while in Zanzibar.

Boat transport in Zanzibar:

Private boats are perfect to discover hidden places and reach small island and beaches all around Zanzibar. As they have no official meeting points it can be difficult to spot them. For not loosing time, Tanzania Horizon Safaris will kindly assist you to organise a boat taxi for your. Feel free to contact us!

Local Transport (Bajaji / Tuk Tuk) in Zanzibar:

Local transport works by DalaDala (public mini bus) and Tuk Tuk (locally called Bajaji). This is probably the cheapest way of transport in Zanzibar but carries some security risks as some drivers have no official licence. We recommend all our clients to contact us to let us organise transport with trusted drivers or preferably order a taxi.

Rent a Car or a Scooter in Zanzibar:

A more individual way of transport is renting a car or a scooter in Zanzibar. You will need an international driver’s licence and to be very careful about traffic and local driving habits. There are several places to rent cars and scooters. Tanzania Horizon Safaris will assist you to find your transport of choice. Feel free to contact us fort further information!

History and Culture of Zanzibar

The name Zanzibar refers to the archipelago of islands in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of mainland Tanzania, made up of Unguja, the largest island, commonly called Zanzibar, Pemba, Mafia and other smaller islands.

Compared to the mainland, Zanzibar often seems like a different country and that’s largely because up until the unification in 1964, it was. The archipelago and its people have their own unique history and culture which is strongly influenced by the Portugese, Omani and English traders and invaders over the centuries.

Unlike mainland Tanzania, Zanzibar doesn’t have tribes. Instead local traditions are a fusion of different ethnic groups that settled on the islands, resulting in events like Pemba bull fights from the Portuguese and Mwaka Kogwa, the celebration of the Persian New Year.

In recent years, Zanzibar has gained international prominence as a cultural centre after hosting the Sauti za Busara music festival and the Zanzibar International Film Festival. This has shown how the islands have succeeded in celebrating their heritage while constantly moving towards the future.

LIFESTYLE

According the United Nations, Tanzania is one of the four poorest countries in the world. Although Zanzibar benefits from tourism, the majority of the population still make their living from subsistence farming and fishing. A recent census showed that there are now over 1 million people living across Unguja and Pemba, which remains predominately Muslim. Islam marks the passing of days, the muezzin’s call to prayer, echoing across the islands from sunrise to sunset. Women veil themselves in ‘buibuis’ or ‘kangas’, children learn their prayers and their manners at the local madrasas, and the archipelago becomes a place of celebration at Eid, after Ramadan, the time of fasting.By Zanzibar’s standards, Stone Town is a sprawling metropolis and Pemba’s Chake Chake is a bustling, industrious town.

The are a outside town is known as ‘shamba’, meaning farm, where the majority of the people live.Village life is simple where most people live in mud houses with woven palm frond roofs, known as ‘makuti’. There is no electricity or running water in rural areas, instead water is carried from wells or rainwater is collected in buckets during the rainy seasons.The daily diet centres around a few local staples foods; beans, maize, breadfruit and cassava, which families grow on their land and cook over an open wood fire or charcoal stove. At times of celebration, rice flavoured with the island’s spices, cardamom, cinnamon and cloves called ‘pilau’ is cooked.

THE HISTORY OF THE SWAHILI COAST

While most of Europe was still floundering in the Dark Ages, the light of the Oriental world had already fallen on Zanzibar. It nestled itself in the middle of a well established mercantile civilization, constructed from a series of independent coastal and island city states, which stretched across East Africa, from the Somali coast to the mouth of the Zambezi river.The Swahili civilization born on the coast of Africa, and nourished by the waters of the Indian Ocean became a well-worn route that was crisscrossed for centuries by merchant vessels bearing traders, adventurers and pirates from India, Arabia, Persia, China, Japan and Russia. They arrived on the East African coast with the monsoon and left with the ships’ holds groaning with trade goods.They brought metal tools, weapons and jewelry and took away ivory, tortoiseshell, slaves and palm oil.The 9th Century Tales of Sinbad the Sailor from the Arabian Tales reflect the seafaring tradition of the people of the Persian Gulf. It was they who named the coast ‘Zanj el Barr’ meaning “land of black people”The African people of the coast intermarried with the visitors, fusing their traditions with Arab customs until ‘the Swahili’ became a distinct race with its own language, feudal rulers, art forms and decorative traditions. They were named from the African word ‘sahl’, meaning coast.Driven from their homes by a succession of wars and conflicts that beset the countries of the Persian Gulf, Shirazi and Arab visitors settled permanently in Swahili towns, bringing the religion of Islam with them.

The Swahili had no one ruler as they were organized into separate communities each ruled by their own sultan.But with a constant flow of populations between the trading centres, that rose and fell with the progression of centuries.Zanzibar was ruled by a dynasty of kings and queens with the hereditary title of ‘Mwinyi Mkuu’. The Mwinyi Mkuu were Islamic rulers and folklore has it that they were credited with magical powers – they held in their possession a set of magic drums, which beat of their own accord when the kingdom was in peril. The last Mwinyi Mkuu died in 1873, and his mansion at Dunga in the centre of Zanzibar Island is thought to be haunted.

TRADING AND LIFE

Zanzibar rose to prominence as a flourishing commercial centre in the thirteenth century. Swahili communities on Zanzibar and Pemba built stone mosques decorated with carved inscriptions; minted silver coins and used delicate Syrian style perfume bottles in green and blue glass.The graves of their more important citizens featured stone towers at either end, with Chinese porcelain bowls sunk into the cement walls. Mosques and private dwellings had dressed stone lintels; rectangular patterned wall niches, plasterwork friezes and stone latticed windows.

The Swahili decorative tradition arose from the fact that the dictates of Islam forbade the rendering of images of people or animals. Patterns on walls, ceilings, furniture and utensils were always abstract, or composed of verses from the Koran in Arabic lettering. The floors of rich households were covered with Persian rugs. Wealthy women wore decorated gold and silver jewellery, and prosperous merchants wore robes and turbans embroidered with gold thread.

Swahili houses were built of fossilized coral held together with limestone cement and thatched with makuti leaves. Stone benches ran around the outside porch, providing a space known as a daka where the master of the house received visitors. A carved double leafed door led into the interior of the house where the privacy of the Swahili women was jealously guarded. Their quarters were in the innermost recesses of the house, beyond an inner courtyard and visited only by the closest of family members. In the wealthier areas of Swahili towns covered walkways crossed high above the streets to allow well born women to glide between the houses without being seen by strangers.

Swahili domestic furniture was both decorative and ingeniously designed. Food trays had saucers to hold dishes at either side, corn grinders incorporated large flat stones, and high backed formal wedding chairs were inlaid with ivory or bone. Babies’ cradles woven from cotton cloth hung from the ceiling or from struts of springy wood. Beds were wooden frames, often carved and covered with coir rope made from coconut husks. They were sat on during the day, slept on at night and carried the dead to their graves. Brass coffeepots were engraved through hammering or chiselling.

Today, Swahili artifacts decorate hotel lobbies and private houses and men still weave through the crowded streets of Stone Town wearing long, flowing white ‘kanzu’ (robes) and embroidered ‘kofia’ (hats).

Swahili cuisine comprises of curries made from coconut milk and spices, maandazi donuts, fried octopus which is eaten daily by most of the population. The traditional music of the Swahili coast, ‘taarab’, is played alongside gangsta rap and European house.

Despite deep-seated traditions of hospitality and religious tolerance, colonisation over the centuries by successive Portuguese, Omani and European invaders has done nothing to dent the unique cultural identity of the Swahili people.

HENNA

Henna has its origins dating as far back as the Bronze Age across Africa, the Middle East and Asia. It is used to decorate the body and hair and even used as a dye for silk, leather and wool. It was said that the Queen of Sheba was adorned with henna when she went to meet King Solomon.

Traditionally, henna is worn at times of celebration, for weddings and religious festivals such as Eid. Henna is made from the leaves of a flowering shrub which thrives in tropical regions and can be found across Zanzibar and Tanzania. To make the dye, branches are cut down and left to dry in the sun, until the leaves fall off. The leaves are then collected and ground into a powder and then sifted to remove any impurities. The powder is mixed into a paste with lemon juice and sometimes essential oils like lavender, tea tree or eucalyptus are added to the mixture to strengthen the colour to make the dye last longer. When the paste is ready, it’s applied to the skin, usually piped through a cellophane cone although sometimes a toothpick is used to trace out the designs. The paste is then left to dry and slowly flakes off to reveal the reddish brown patterns underneath. The dye darkens after the first couple of days and can last for up to a fortnight. Henna can also be used as a hair dye where fresh leaves are covered with coconut oil and left to infuse over a stove for 30 minutes, and then the coloured oil is applied to the hair, giving a red tint and leaving the hair healthy and shiny.

Black henna, known as ‘wanja’ in Swahili has become increasingly popular in creating henna designs. Wanja used to be made using seeds, which were burnt and then cooked with coconut oil to make a paste, similar to red henna, but nowadays, black hair dye is used as a substitute for the organic paste. Hair dye can cause allergic reactions, blisters and sores if it is used as henna, so if you want a design in black henna ensure that the paste is made from indigo and not hair dye.

During a Swahili wedding, the bride is decorated with henna for luck and to bless the marriage. A bride can sit for hours, as the henna artist paints flowers across the her skin over her arms, decorating both sides of her hands and also over her feet and legs. Her fingernails and toe nails are stained orange with the dye and some brides choose to have their backs and shoulders decorated. Henna patterns in Zanzibar are a fusion of Arab and Indian designs, combining the intricate fine floral and paisley patterns found in Indian ‘mehendi’ with the larger flowers found in Arab henna. Both red and black henna can be used and according to Zanzibari tradition the bride does not have to do any housework in her new home until her bridal henna has faded.

Designs and patterns have evolved over time, falling in and out of fashion. Western influence can clearly be seen, with mamas at the beaches offering henna along with massage and hair braiding to tourists, as part of the beach beauty package. Chinese symbols, Celtic tattoos and pictures of dolphins are increasingly found in pattern books but henna traditions remains strong on Zanzibar and will be used for many centuries to come.

ZANZIBAR VACATION

ZANZIBAR BEACH HOLIDAY

ZANZIBAR BEACH HOLIDAY

he Zanzibar Archipelago is an awesome world class beach destination! Check out our itineraries for Zanzibar, Pemba and Mafia Island and read all you need to know about these tropical islands. You can easily combine a Zanzibar vacation with a safari on the

Zanzibar beaches

Exursions during your Zanzibar holiday

Best time to visit Zanzibar

Zanzibar Hotels

History and Culture of Zanzibar

Upcoming Tours

Featured Tours

Recent News

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ZANZIBAR VACATION

ZANZIBAR BEACH HOLIDAY

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ZANZIBAR BEACH HOLIDAY

he Zanzibar Archipelago is an awesome world class beach destination! Check out our itineraries for Zanzibar, Pemba and Mafia Island and read all you need to know about these tropical islands. You can easily combine a Zanzibar vacation with a safari on the

Zanzibar beaches

Exursions during your Zanzibar holiday

Best time to visit Zanzibar

Zanzibar Hotels

History and Culture of Zanzibar

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Upcoming Tours

Featured Tours

Recent News

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