Zanzibar · Six Days

Six days on the island, shared

Two nights in Stone Town and three on the east coast, on shared transfers and set excursions — the cheapest honest way to add the island to a safari, and the tide told to you plainly.

Days

Nights

Beach nights

Tides a day

I · Overview

The route, and why this shape

Two nights in the old town, three on the east coast, shared transfers between them — and the tide told to you first.

Most people who come to Zanzibar after a safari want three things from it: the old town, a beach, and not to spend the price of another safari getting between the two. This week is built for that. The transfers are shared minibuses that run at set times with whoever booked the same days; the excursions — the Stone Town walk, the spice farm, Jozani forest — are done as a group; the hotels are yours. It is timed to start the day after our joining northern-circuit safari ends, and it works just as well on its own.

The shape is two and three. Two nights in Stone Town, because the walk and the spice farm need a full day between arrival and departure and an afternoon is not enough for either. Three nights on the east coast — Paje and Jambiani in the south-east, or Matemwe in the north-east, your choice — with Jozani on the second morning and the last day free for a boat or for nothing.

What you give up is the freedom to move at your own hour: the minibus leaves when it leaves. What you gain is a per-person price that does not depend on how many of you there are. And one thing this page will keep saying, because guests keep being surprised by it: the east coast has a tide, the sea goes out a long way twice a day, and the week is better if you know that before you land.

Length

6 days / 5 nights

Country

Tanzania — Zanzibar

Start / end

Zanzibar → Zanzibar

Tour type

Joining — shared transfers, set group excursions

Group size

Up to 7 guests per shared transfer

Meal plan

Bed and breakfast in Stone Town · half board on the coast

Best months

June – October, and December – February

Activity level

Easy — walking in town, a forest path, the beach

Vehicle

Air-conditioned minibus for the shared transfers

II · The days

Day by day, all six

Every day opens. A walk and a spice farm in town, the forest and the lagoon on the coast, one free day. See every lodge and camp we use

Day

Arrival

Landing on the island, and into the lanes

06°13′S 39°13′E

Dinner

Landing on the island, and into the lanes

06°13′S 39°13′E

You land at Abeid Amani Karume International, seven kilometres south of Stone Town. If you have come from the joining safari the flight from Arusha or Kilimanjaro is under two hours; if you have come direct from overseas, you are at sea level for the first time in a while and the air is heavy with it. A shared transfer waits for the day’s arrivals and runs into town together, which is the first thing to understand about this week: the vehicle leaves at a set time, with whoever has landed by then.

Nothing is scheduled tonight. The old town is a warren of lanes too narrow for cars, so the transfer drops you at the nearest point and the last few hundred metres are on foot behind a porter with a handcart. Find your roof. Most Stone Town hotels have one, and the call to prayer at dusk, from a dozen mosques at slightly different times, is the sound of the place.

Eat at Forodhani Gardens on the seafront if you are hungry: grilled seafood and Zanzibar pizza off charcoal stalls from about six in the evening. Pay in shillings, agree the price first, and pick the stall with the queue of local families rather than the one with the loudest tout.

Meals

Dinner

Travel

Airport to Stone Town · 7 km · about 20 mins on a shared transfer

Highlight

Sea level, salt air, and a rooftop for the evening

Meet at Zanzibar airport

Shared transfer, set time

Forodhani at dusk

Where you sleep

COMFORT

Emerson Spice Hotel

★★★★☆

Stone Town, small hotel in the old lanes

A converted merchant’s house: carved doors, a courtyard, a rooftop for breakfast, and the seafront five minutes away on foot.

LUXURY

Zanzibar Serena Hotel

★★★★★

Stone Town, restored mansion on the seafront

Sea-facing rooms, a pool in the courtyard, and the dhows going out past the terrace at sunset.

Day

Stone Town

The old town on foot, and a spice farm

06°10′S 39°11′E

Breakfast · Lunch

The old town on foot, and a spice farm

06°10′S 39°11′E

The walk starts at nine, guided, in a group of whoever booked this week. Two and a half hours is the right length. The Old Fort on the seafront, built by Omani Arabs in about 1700 over the ruins of a Portuguese church; the House of Wonders next to it, the tallest building in the old town, seen from outside because it has been closed for repair since part of it collapsed in 2020; the seafront at Forodhani by daylight; then inland to the Anglican cathedral, built in 1873 on the site of the slave market, with the memorial sculpture in the yard and the holding chambers underneath, which are small and low and worth the discomfort. Darajani market at the end, which is loud and honest about where fish comes from.

After lunch the minibus goes inland for the spice farm, about twenty kilometres and half an hour. Zanzibar was the world’s largest clove producer for most of a century and the plantations are what the island was built on. You walk through a working smallholding with a guide who pulls cinnamon bark off a tree, cracks a nutmeg out of its fruit and hands you a green peppercorn to chew. It sounds like a tourist set-piece and it is one; it is also genuinely the best two hours of botany on the island.

Back in town by late afternoon. The alternative for the afternoon, if you would rather have the sea than the spices, is Prison Island — twenty minutes by boat, a nineteenth-century quarantine station and a colony of Aldabra giant tortoises. It is an add-on, not a swap, and you cannot do both in one afternoon.

Meals

Breakfast · Lunch

Travel

Walking, then ~20 km inland by shared minibus · about 30 mins each way

Highlight

The Old Fort, the slave market memorial, then cloves on the tree

Guided walk, 2½ hrs

Slave market memorial

Spice farm

Where you sleep

COMFORT

Emerson Spice Hotel

★★★★☆

Stone Town, small hotel in the old lanes

Second night, same room. Dinner is on your own in town; the rooftop restaurants are the quiet option.

LUXURY

Zanzibar Serena Hotel

★★★★★

Stone Town, restored mansion on the seafront

Second night. Ask for the sea side — the lane side is cooler but you lose the sunset.

Day

Transfer

East across the island to the coast

06°16′S 39°32′E

Breakfast · Dinner

East across the island to the coast

06°16′S 39°32′E

The shared transfer leaves Stone Town mid-morning and crosses the island on tarmac through coconut and clove country. Zanzibar is about 85 kilometres long and 30 wide, so no drive is long; the east coast is an hour to an hour and a half depending on which stretch of it you are going to.

Two stretches, and you choose when you book. Paje and Jambiani in the south-east are village beaches on a wide, shallow lagoon: white sand, kitesurfers when the wind is up, seaweed farms laid out in rows on the flats, and a strip of small guesthouses and restaurants along the sand. Matemwe in the north-east is quieter, more spread out, faces Mnemba atoll, and is the shortest boat ride to the best snorkelling on the island. Both are on the same fringing reef and both have the same characteristic that the west coast does not: the tide.

It has to be said plainly. On the east coast the sea goes out twice a day, by several hundred metres, and at low water the lagoon is ankle-deep sand and seagrass out to the reef. You swim on the high, walk the flats on the low, and your hotel will hand you the tide table at check-in. People who arrive expecting to swim at any hour are disappointed; people who arrive knowing this find the flats at low tide are half the point.

Meals

Breakfast · Dinner

Travel

Stone Town to the east coast · 50–60 km · about 1–1½ hrs, shared transfer

Highlight

The reef, the lagoon, and the first look at the tide table

Paje/Jambiani or Matemwe

Tide table at check-in

Fringing reef

Where you sleep

COMFORT

Pongwe Beach Hotel

★★★★☆

East coast, small beachfront guesthouse

A dozen rooms on the sand, a pool for the low-tide hours, and fish grilled on the beach in the evening.

LUXURY

Baraza Resort & Spa Zanzibar

★★★★★

East coast, beachfront resort

Villas among the palms with a larger pool, a dive centre on site or nearby, and Mnemba within reach by boat from Matemwe.

Day

Beach

Jozani forest, and the red colobus

06°14′S 39°25′E

Breakfast · Dinner

Jozani forest, and the red colobus

06°14′S 39°25′E

The one set excursion on the coast, and it is a morning, not a day. Jozani Chwaka Bay is Zanzibar’s only national park: about fifty square kilometres of groundwater forest and mangrove in the narrow middle of the island, half an hour from either beach. The minibus collects the group after breakfast.

The reason to go is the Zanzibar red colobus, a monkey found on this island and nowhere else, with a rust-red back, a black face and a wild white crown. Around two and a half thousand are thought to survive, roughly half of them in and around Jozani, and the troops near the visitor centre are used to people. You will see them, close, within the first half hour — this is one of the few wildlife promises on this site we are comfortable making. Sykes’ monkeys, bushbabies you will not see, and a mangrove boardwalk over the creek at the end.

Back at the beach by lunch, and the afternoon is the tide’s. If the sea is in, swim; if it is out, walk the lagoon to the reef edge with reef shoes on, because the seagrass hides urchins. The women working the seaweed lines will sell you a bag of it dried, and it is the island’s third export after cloves and tourists.

Meals

Breakfast · Dinner

Travel

East coast to Jozani · 15–30 km · about 30 mins each way, shared minibus

Highlight

A monkey found nowhere else on earth, at arm’s length

Jozani Chwaka Bay

Red colobus

Reef shoes

Where you sleep

COMFORT

Pongwe Beach Hotel

★★★★☆

East coast, small beachfront guesthouse

Second night, same room. Nobody is packing.

LUXURY

Baraza Resort & Spa Zanzibar

★★★★★

East coast, beachfront resort

Second night. The spa is the usual use of a low-tide afternoon.

Day

Beach

A free day, a dhow, or Mnemba

05°49′S 39°23′E

Breakfast · Dinner

A free day, a dhow, or Mnemba

05°49′S 39°23′E

Nothing is scheduled today and the honest advice is to keep it that way. Five nights is a short week; this is the only day in it with no minibus and no nine o’clock, and most guests spend it on the high-tide swim, the low-tide walk, and a long lunch at a village restaurant on the sand.

Two add-ons for people who want a boat. Mnemba is a private sand island inside a coral atoll off the north-east coast; you cannot land, but the reef around it holds the clearest water and the most fish on Zanzibar, and from Matemwe it is a short crossing. From Paje it is a longer road transfer first and an early start. Bottlenose dolphins are often met on the way and never promised. Neither is the sea: the kusi, the south-east monsoon, blows from June to September and on rough days the boats stay in.

The other version is a dhow day — a lateen-rigged wooden boat, a sandbank at low water, fish grilled on it, and a couple of hours under sail. From the east coast it is a daytime trip; the sunset sail everyone has seen photographs of works from the west and north coasts, where the sun goes down over the sea, and not from here, where it sets behind you over the land.

Meals

Breakfast · Dinner

Travel

No scheduled transfer · optional boat, 30–45 mins to Mnemba from Matemwe

Highlight

The best snorkelling on the island, if the sea allows

No schedule

Mnemba atoll, add-on

Dhow day, add-on

Where you sleep

COMFORT

Pongwe Beach Hotel

★★★★☆

East coast, small beachfront guesthouse

Third and last night. The kitchen will grill whatever the boat brought back.

LUXURY

Baraza Resort & Spa Zanzibar

★★★★★

East coast, beachfront resort

Third and last night, with dinner set out on the sand if you ask in the morning.

Day

Departure

A last swim, then the airport

06°13′S 39°13′E

Breakfast

A last swim, then the airport

06°13′S 39°13′E

Breakfast, a final swim if the tide is in, and the shared transfer back across the island to the airport. It runs once, at a time set to the day’s departures, and it will not wait; if your flight is at an awkward hour a private transfer can be arranged instead. Be at the terminal two hours before an international flight — it is small, and the queues move slowly.

A number of long-haul carriers fly direct out of Zanzibar; if yours connects through Dar es Salaam it is a twenty-minute hop with many flights a day, and through Nairobi about an hour and a half. If your flight is a late one, a second spice farm on the road to the airport is a better use of the morning than a hotel lobby, and the transfer can be timed for it.

Five nights is enough to have done Stone Town properly, learned the tide, and seen the one animal that lives only here. It is not enough to have got bored, which is the argument for its length.

Meals

Breakfast

Travel

East coast to Zanzibar airport · 50–60 km · about 1–1½ hrs, shared transfer

Highlight

Out from Zanzibar, direct or via Dar

Shared airport transfer

Direct flights from Zanzibar

Departure

Where you sleep

Departure day — no overnight

III · Rates

What it costs, by group size

Priced per person. The transfers and excursions are already shared, so the rate does not fall with your group size.

Boutique rates by group size, per person and group total
Group size	Rooms	Per person	Group total
1 guest	1 room	$1,310	$1,310
2 guests	1 room	$1,310	$2,620
3 guests	2 rooms	$1,310	$3,930
4 guests	2 rooms	$1,310	$5,240
5 guests	3 rooms	$1,310	$6,550
6+ guests	3 rooms	$1,310	$7,860

Single supplement

$370

Added when a guest does not share a room

Child, 3 – 11 years

30% off

Sharing with two adults

Peak season uplift

Included in the rates above

July – August, and the festive weeks

Resort rates by group size, per person and group total
Group size	Rooms	Per person	Group total
1 guest	1 room	$6,770	$6,770
2 guests	1 room	$6,770	$13,540
3 guests	2 rooms	$6,770	$20,310
4 guests	2 rooms	$6,770	$27,080
5 guests	3 rooms	$6,770	$33,850
6+ guests	3 rooms	$6,770	$40,620

Single supplement

$2,290

Added when a guest does not share a room

Child, 3 – 11 years

30% off

Sharing with two adults

Peak season uplift

Included in the rates above

July – August, and the festive weeks

All figures in US dollars, per person sharing unless stated. Valid for travel until 30 June 2027. Park fees, guiding, vehicle, accommodation and full board are included — see what is and is not covered below.

IV · Included

What is in the price, and what is not

Stated in full, both ways.

What is included

Shared airport transfers on the set arrival and departure days
Shared transfer Stone Town to the east coast, via Jozani if timed that way
Guided Stone Town walking tour, in a group, with a local guide
Spice farm visit, shared minibus and guide
Jozani Chwaka Bay National Park — entry fee and shared transfer
Five nights' accommodation as listed: bed and breakfast in Stone Town, half board on the coast
Lunch on the spice-farm day
Shared transfers, up to 7 guests per vehicle
A local contact on call throughout the week

What is not

Flights to and from Zanzibar, including the hop from Arusha or Kilimanjaro
Tanzania visa — USD 50, or USD 100 for United States passports
Zanzibar's mandatory inbound insurance (USD 44) and the per-night infrastructure levy
Travel insurance, which we ask every guest to hold
Dinners in Stone Town, lunches on the coast, and all drinks
Prison Island, Mnemba snorkelling, dhow days and diving
Private transfers outside the set times
Tips for guides, drivers, boat crews and hotel staff
Personal spending and souvenirs

V · Add-ons

Worth adding, if you have the days

Priced separately and arranged on request.

Day 2 · afternoon · by boat, about 20 mins

Prison Island

Changuu, five kilometres off Stone Town: a nineteenth-century quarantine station that never held a prisoner, a colony of Aldabra giant tortoises, some over a century old, and a small beach. It replaces the spice farm afternoon rather than adding to it.

USD 90 per person

Day 5 · by boat

Mnemba atoll, snorkel or dive

The clearest water on the island and a resident population of bottlenose dolphins that are often met and never guaranteed. Short from Matemwe, a longer morning from Paje. In the June to September monsoon some days the boats stay in; the sea decides.

USD 140 per person

Day 5 · about 5 hrs

A dhow day on the lagoon

A lateen-rigged wooden boat, a sandbank at low water, fish grilled on it and a couple of hours under sail. From the east coast it is a daytime trip; the sunset version belongs to the west and north coasts.

USD 110 per person

Before day 1 · 7 days

The joining safari, beforehand

This week is timed to start the day after our shared-vehicle northern-circuit safari ends in Arusha. Tarangire, two nights at Seronera and the crater, then a two-hour flight to the island.

From USD 3,780 per person, 7 days

VI · The island

Where this itinerary takes you

One old town, one coast, one small forest — the whole island is 85 kilometres long.

Stone Town

The old town of Zanzibar City, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2000: a few hundred metres of coral-stone lanes between the Old Fort on the seafront and Darajani market, with Omani, Indian, Swahili and British building on top of each other. Two nights, one guided morning.

The east coast

Forty kilometres of white sand behind a fringing reef, from Matemwe in the north-east to Paje and Jambiani in the south-east. The reef keeps the water flat and warm, 26 to 29 °C through the year, and the tide empties the lagoon twice a day. Three nights.

Jozani Chwaka Bay National Park

About fifty square kilometres of groundwater forest and mangrove in the waist of the island, and the island’s only national park. Home to roughly half the world’s Zanzibar red colobus, a monkey found nowhere else. One morning.

The question everyone asks

Can we swim whenever we like on the east coast?

Low tides a day, each emptying the lagoon for hours

No, and it is the one thing about this coast that guests are most often not told. The east coast of Zanzibar sits behind a fringing reef a kilometre or more offshore, and inside it is a shallow lagoon. The tide moves the sea across that lagoon twice a day: at high water it is chest-deep and clear at the beach; at low water it is gone, hundreds of metres out, and what is left is rippled sand, seagrass, rock pools, and the seaweed farms — rows of lines staked out on the flats, worked mostly by village women, that are the coast’s other economy. Spring tides around the full and new moon move the water furthest; neap tides in between leave more of it.

So the day is shaped by the table rather than the clock. Your hotel prints it; read it on arrival. Swim on the high, walk the flats on the low with reef shoes on, and put the boat trips on days when the tide times suit them. If swimming at any hour matters more to you than quiet and the reef, tell us and we will place you on the north coast at Nungwi or Kendwa instead, where the drop-off is close in and the sea stays. That is a different week and we will say so; this one is for the east coast, tide and all.

VII · Season

The best time to travel

Two dry windows that suit the island, and the two months this week does not run.

June to October is the cool dry season and the months this week runs most often. It is the least humid time of the year, the days are clear, and it lines up with the safari season on the mainland. The south-east monsoon — the kusi — blows through it, and the east coast catches that wind: good for the kitesurfers at Paje, less good for boats, and a few Mnemba trips a month are cancelled. The sea is warm regardless.

December to February is the second window: hot, still, and the clearest water of the year, with the north-east monsoon light on the lagoon. It is also the most humid time and the busiest over the festive weeks, when the hotels charge their highest rates. January and February after the holiday rush are the best value of the good months.

March and November are the shoulders. The short rains in November arrive as afternoon storms that clear, and March is hot and heavy before the long rains break. Both are usable; both are cheaper; neither is what the photographs show.

April and May are the long rains, and we will say plainly that this week does not run then. It rains hard for days at a stretch, a number of the coast hotels close for the season, and the lagoon turns brown with run-off. If those are the only weeks you have, we would rather build you something on the mainland than sell you this.

VIII · Flights

Getting there and back

Fly into Zanzibar (ZNZ). Land by early afternoon on day 1 to meet the shared transfer.

Fly into Zanzibar — Abeid Amani Karume International, code ZNZ — seven kilometres south of Stone Town. If you are coming from the joining safari, there are several flights a day from Arusha and Kilimanjaro, under two hours, and we will tell you which one meets the shared transfer. If you are coming from overseas, a number of carriers fly direct into Zanzibar; the alternative is Dar es Salaam and a twenty-minute hop across the channel.

Land on the day the week starts, and by early afternoon if you can. The shared transfer waits for the day’s arrivals up to a set time and then leaves; later arrivals go in by taxi at their own cost, which is not expensive but is not included.

Going home, the transfer back to the airport on day 6 runs once, timed to the day’s departures. If your flight is early in the morning or late at night, ask for a private transfer instead and we will quote it. Many international routings out of Zanzibar leave in the evening, which gives you the last morning on the beach.

Tanzania requires a visa for most passports — USD 50, or USD 100 for United States citizens, valid up to 90 days and covering Zanzibar. Apply online in advance. Zanzibar also requires its own inbound insurance, USD 44 at the time of writing, and charges a per-night infrastructure levy through the hotels; we will give you the current figures when we quote.

IX · Other costs

What else you will spend

Visas, Zanzibar’s own fees, insurance, tips and the meals that are yours — set out so there is no surprise on the ground.

Visa and entry

USD 50 — USD 100 for US passports

Tanzania issues a tourist visa online (eVisa) or on arrival at Zanzibar. Applying in advance is faster and avoids the queue at immigration. One visa covers the mainland and the island — if you have come from the safari you already hold it.

Zanzibar has, since 2024, required arriving visitors to hold its own inbound travel insurance, bought online or on arrival for USD 44, in addition to your own policy. Check the rule is still in force before you fly; it changes.

Travel insurance

Typically USD 60 – 150 per trip

We ask every guest to travel insured, over and above the island’s own compulsory policy, which is basic. Medical cover and evacuation are the parts that matter; the nearest large hospital is in Dar es Salaam, across the water.

Check that the policy covers what you might add on the coast. Scuba diving is excluded by many standard policies unless you ask for it, and kitesurfing by some.

Tips

Usual range USD 5 – 15 per guest per day

Tipping is customary in Tanzania and it is genuinely optional. On a shared week there is no single guide with you all trip, so it is spread: the walking guide, the spice-farm guide and the Jozani ranger are each tipped modestly at the end of their excursion, and the transfer drivers a little.

The hotels run a shared staff box at reception so that housekeeping and the kitchen are included, not only the people you see. Boat crews on the add-on days are tipped separately.

Meals and drinks

USD 3 – 25 a head

Stone Town is bed and breakfast, so dinner is yours, and the coast is half board, so lunch is. Both are cheap and good: Forodhani stalls are a few dollars, a village restaurant on the sand grills the morning’s fish for under ten, and the hotel restaurants charge more for the same fish. Zanzibar is mostly Muslim — alcohol is at the hotels and the tourist restaurants and not in the villages.

Personal spending

Entirely up to you

Spices from the farm, kanga cloth from Darajani, a bag of dried seaweed, laundry, and anything you forgot to pack. Cards work at the hotels and almost nowhere else; there are ATMs in Stone Town and very few on the coast, so draw shillings before the transfer east.

US dollar notes dated before 2009 are refused across Tanzania. Bring newer ones.

X · Why us

Why book this with us

Booked by the people who ran your safari

If you have come from our joining northern circuit, the same office books the island, times the flight to the transfer, and answers the phone if it goes wrong. Nothing falls between two companies.

We will tell you about the tide before you book

Most east-coast bookings are sold without a word about the lagoon emptying twice a day. We put it on the page, in the day notes and in the questions, because a guest who knows enjoys it and a guest who does not feels cheated.

Shared where it saves you money, not where it costs you

The minibus and the group walk are shared because sharing them cuts the price and changes nothing about the experience. The rooms, the beach days and the boat add-ons are yours alone.

No departures in the long rains

This week does not run in April or May. We would rather leave the calendar empty than fill a minibus for a week we know will be wet.

XI · Questions

Frequently asked

What guests ask before booking a shared week on the island.

How much does a 6 day joining Zanzibar week cost?

Per person, and it moves with the season and the tier you choose — the coast hotels have their own peak weeks over Christmas and in August. Because the transfers and excursions are shared, the per-person price does not fall as your own party grows the way a private trip’s does. Our rates for this week are set out in the table above — ask us and we will quote for your exact dates rather than give you a range.

What is shared, exactly, and what is not?

Shared: the airport transfers on the set days, the minibus across the island, the guided Stone Town walk, the spice farm and the Jozani morning — all done as a group with whoever booked the same days. Not shared: your rooms, your beach days, the free day, and any boat you add. The group size per transfer is up to seven.

Can we swim at any time of day on the east coast?

No. The lagoon behind the reef empties at low tide, twice a day, by several hundred metres, and for a few hours either side of low water the sea is a long walk away over sand and seagrass. Swim on the high tide and walk the flats on the low — your hotel will give you the table. If swimming at any hour matters more than quiet, ask us for the north coast instead; see our Zanzibar page for the coasts in detail.

Paje and Jambiani, or Matemwe — which should we choose?

Paje and Jambiani in the south-east are livelier village beaches with restaurants along the sand, kitesurfing in the windy months and the seaweed farms on the flats. Matemwe in the north-east is quieter and more spread out, and is the closest point to Mnemba atoll for snorkelling. Both have the same tide. Tell us which matters more and we will place you accordingly; the shared transfer serves both.

Does this week follow straight on from the joining safari?

Yes — it is timed to start the day after the seven-day joining safari ends in Arusha. You fly from Arusha or Kilimanjaro in the morning, under two hours, and the shared transfer meets the flight. The flight itself is not included and its cost is about USD 100 – 150 per person one way. The week also works entirely on its own.

Will we definitely see the red colobus at Jozani?

Almost certainly. The troops near the visitor centre are used to people and are usually within a few minutes’ walk of the path, which makes this the most reliable wildlife sighting on any page of this site. We still will not write “guaranteed”, because they are wild animals and it has happened, rarely, that the troop was deep in the forest that morning.

Is the sea calm in July and August?

Warm, yes; calm, usually but not always. The south-east monsoon blows from June to September and the east coast catches it, so there is wind most afternoons and boats to Mnemba are occasionally cancelled. December to February is the stillest and clearest water of the year. April and May are wet and this week does not run then.

Is this suitable for children?

Yes, with one caution. The Stone Town walk is two and a half hours on foot in the heat and the slave-market chambers are grim, so we would suggest it for children of about eight and up. Jozani and the beach suit any age, and the shallow lagoon at high tide is safe for small swimmers. Child rates are 30% below the adult rate for children sharing with two adults.

Can we make it longer, or private?

Both. Extra nights on the coast can be added at either tier, and the whole week runs as a private itinerary with your own vehicle and guide on any date, at the private price. Pemba, the quieter island to the north, is the usual alternative for people who want less of everything; see the Pemba itinerary.

XII · Your trip

Request your personalised safari proposal

Tell us how you like to travel and we will put together a personalised proposal for this route — dates, camps and a firm price per person. No payment is required at this stage.

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