1. Explore Stone Town

Stone Town is the reason Zanzibar is a UNESCO World Heritage site and the part of a Zanzibar trip that travellers most typically shortchange. Two square kilometres of coral-stone buildings, overhanging balconies, alleyways too narrow for cars, and some 16,000 people who live here. This is a neighbourhood, not an open-air museum.

Hire a licensed guide for the first two or three hours. Not optional advice. The buildings are not self-explanatory, and there is a difference between walking past a nondescript entrance and knowing that you are staring at the location of the last legal slave market in East Africa. Good private guides expect to be paid between $20 and $35. Ask your hotel. The guides that work with the better hotels are licensed and unhurried.

Then lose yourself, on purpose. The alleyways have a loose grid but no map survives touch with them. Use the seaside as your reset point – travel inland until you’re lost, then walk back toward the sound of traffic or the smell of the ocean. The essentials: Darajani Market before 9am, the Anglican Cathedral and slave quarters underneath it, the Old Fort late afternoon and Forodhani Gardens after dark when it turns into a street-food market.

2. Visit Nungwi Beach

Nungwi is situated at the northern extremity of the island, a 60 to 75 minute drive from Stone Town, depending on traffic through Mahonda. It is the most active beach on the island, with the most hotels, restaurants, dive centers and bars – either precisely what you want or exactly what you don’t.

The practical advantage is huge. Nungwi is far enough north that the tide range does not really effect swimming. You may stroll into deep water at any hour, which is not true of most of the east coast. If you’re travelling with kids or simply refuse to arrange your day around a tide chart, this is more important than any other issue.

Nungwi is also a real fishing and boat manufacturing community. Walk five minutes past the hotels to the boatyard on the west side and you will find dhows being built by hand with adzs and no designs, the way they have been built for centuries. It’s free and takes twenty minutes and is more memorable than anything on the beach strip.

3. Relax at Kendwa Beach

Kendwa is a twenty minute walk or five minutes drive south of Nungwi and it is the beach I recommend most often to couples. Same tidal advantage – swimmable all day – but wider sand, fewer boats tied offshore, and a west-facing perspective that affords you the greatest sunsets on the island. Nungwi points north; Kendwa looks directly at the setting sun. That is very different.

The Full Moon Party at Kendwa Rocks has been running for years and attracts a great crowd every month. If that’s your jam, plan for it. If not, stay in the southern end of the bay, which is notably quieter, or verify the lunar calendar before booking.

4. Discover Paje

About an hour from Stone Town, Paje on the southeast coast is a whole different prospect. Wide, flat, blindingly white beach, shallow turquoise sea inside a reef and wind – steady, consistent wind that has made this community one of the world’s finest kitesurfing locations.

You knew the tides here. At low tide the water recedes several hundred meters and you’re faced with a wide stretch of damp sand, tidal pools and seaweed farms. It’s lovely, really – some of the best photography on the island occurs at low tide at Paje – but you can’t swim. It forms a lagoon during high tide. Each condition lasts around six hours and progresses about fifty minutes later each day.

The community itself is young and laid-back: beach cafés, yoga studios, kite schools, a handful of very decent coffee spots. It’s the nearest thing Zanzibar has to a backpacker-meets-digital-nomad atmosphere and it works nicely for single travellers.

5. Tour a Spice Farm

To be honest, ‘spice tour’ seems like something you do because it’s on a list. It’s not. A nice one is a two-hour stroll around a working smallholding where someone slices open a nutmeg for you, gets you to crush a cinnamon leaf, digs out fresh turmeric that stains your fingers orange and climbs a tree barefoot to bring down a coconut. The kids love it. Adults who cook, love it more.

The farms are clustered in Kizimbani and Kidichi, 30 to 40 minutes inland from Stone Town. Expect to pay $20-30 for a lunch of pilau or biryani cooked with the spices you just walked past. Skip the hasty version tacked onto a transfer with a fifteen minute “tour” with the real destination being the gift shop.

6. Visit Prison Island

Changuu Island – everyone calls it Prison Island — located about 20 minutes by boat from Stone Town’s beachfront. The name is a misnomer: the prison was constructed in the 1890s, but never held inmates. Instead it became a yellow fever quarantine station. Before that, in the 1860s, the island was used to imprison enslaved people, and that’s the part of the history most tours gloss over and shouldn’t.

Today the major attraction is a colony of Aldabra giant tortoises, a gift from the Seychelles in 1919. Some are over 100 years old and one is recorded at about 190. Kids think it’s funny that you can feed them spinach. There is a little beach for swimming, and there is some nice snorkelling on the north side of the island.

7. Swim With Sea Turtles, Responsibly

This one needs a caution before the endorsement. Most travellers are taken to two destinations, Mnarani Marine Turtles Conservation Pond in Nungwi and Baraka Natural Aquarium. The turtles are in a tidal pool, visitors feed them seagrass, and both facilities do release hatchlings and do rescue injured animals, but what you’re paying for is a swim with captive turtles. Some travellers are okay with that. Others feel cheated subsequently and thus I would rather tell you now.

The other, and far better, experience is to see green and hawksbill turtles in open water. Mnemba Atoll does this every day. Chumbe Island does, and for divers the reefs off Matemwe. No enclosure, no feeding, no assurance – and that’s what makes it worthwhile, when a turtle surfaces two meters away and looks at you.

If you go to the ponds, go to Mnarani, not Baraka. It’s a community conservation effort with a recorded hatchling release program and it costs roughly $10 to get in.

8. Go Snorkeling

Zanzibar’s reef snorkelling is great in the right spot, and unremarkable in the wrong, and the difference is almost entirely where the boat takes you. At low tide the house reef off a beach of the hotel is normally sand and seagrass. A proper boat voyage is a separate sport.

The headline is Mnemba Atoll. A fringing reef off a private island on the northeast coast, accessed by boat from Matemwe or Kendwa, including hard and soft coral, abundant reef fish, numerous green turtles and a good chance of dolphins on the transit. Shared outings $45 to $90; private boat $180 and above. Leave early – 7:30 am departures get you glassy water before the wind develops at 10.

Chumbe Island Coral Park is the calm answer to the noise of Stone Town, and possibly the superior reef: It’s a protected marine sanctuary that was closed to fishing in 1994 and the coral cover proves it. Day visitors are limited so book weeks ahead. About $100-$130 with boat, guide and lunch.

Safari Blue out of Fumba is the sociable full-day option on the southwest coast: dhow sailing, two or three snorkel stops, a sandbank lunch and a seafood grill. Touristy in the greatest way possible. $60-$90.

9. Go Scuba Diving

Zanzibar is a fantastic place to learn to dive and a great place to dive even if you are already qualified. Water temps are 78 to 84°F year-round, visibility is usually 50 to 100 feet, and sites range from gentle reef to strong current.

A two-tank day is $120-$180. A PADI Open Water course normally costs between $500 and $650 and lasts three to four days. Book the course before you come to coordinate instructor schedules, and allow at least 18 hours between your last dive and any flight—which is important whether you are travelling to the Serengeti or home.

10. Sunset Dhow Cruise

Two hours, thirty to sixty bucks, and consistently one of the best nites of the trip. A dhow is a wooden sailing boat, with a lateen sail, the same design that transported the monsoon trade for a thousand years. To watch one work in a light breeze is worth the ticket on its own.

This can be done from the seafront at Stone Town, from Kendwa or from Kizimkazi in the south. Stone Town has the nicest backdrop. The old buildings, catching the last light as you come back in. Kendwa has the best sunset. Most voyages feature soft beverages and a beer or two; the best ones include fresh fruit and a captain who actually sails, instead than motors in a circle.

11. Jozani Forest National Park

Jozani Chwaka Bay National Park is the last substantial area of indigenous woodland on Zanzibar and is home to the rare Zanzibar red colobus, a monkey species found nowhere else on earth, with a population of around 6,000. They are used to humans, not afraid, and typically sit 10 feet above the trail.

The tour is around two hours: a guided forest walk, the colobus soldiers, and a boardwalk through a mangrove swamp, which is more exciting than it seems. Entry is roughly $10 plus a tour fee and the park is around 45 minutes from Stone Town off the way to the southeast coast – making it a simple stop on a transfer day rather than a separate excursion.

Go early morning or after 4 pm The monkeys move high into the canopy in the middle of the day and the humidity in the forest is stifling.

12. Dolphin Tours, Done Ethically

Look, I’m going to be blunt here, since this is the activity most likely to make you feel horrible. The usual Kizimkazi dolphin excursion involves a fleet of boats locating a pod of bottlenose or humpback dolphins, and then racing to drop people in the water in front of them. The dolphins run away. The boats trail. It happens again. Research on the Kizimkazi community has shown demonstrable behavioural disturbance resulting from this very pressure.

There’s a better one . A few providers do boat-based watching only – you stay on board, the captain keeps a polite distance, engines idle rather than chase, and you watch dolphins be dolphins. It’s the same price. It is a quieter experience, and frankly, a more remarkable one. Ask your hotel or us for a no-swim, no-chase operator, and be prepared for a beach tout’s shrug if they don’t have one.

The honest alternative: you will often observe dolphins on the transit to Mnemba regardless, from a boat that isn’t chasing them. That’s the one I’d choose.

13. The Rock Restaurant

The Rock is perched atop a coral outcrop off Michamvi Pingwe on the east coast. At low tide you walk out to it, and at high tide you are taken out on a boat. It is the most photographed building in Zanzibar and it deserves the attention – the location is truly magnificent.

Realistic expectations: the cuisine is nice, not transcendent, and you’re paying for the setting. Expect to pay $40-70 per person. Lunch is better value than dinner and the light is better for photography. In high season, walk-ups are turned away all the time, so book at least a week ahead. It’s roughly 30 minutes from Paje, closer to 90 from Nungwi.

14. Local Food Experiences

Zanzibari cooking is the best argument against staying inside your resort. A few things worth seeking out:

Forodhani Gardens night market — The Stone Town seashore is full of barbecues after dark. Try the mishkaki (marinated beef skewers), Zanzibar pizza (a folded, fried stuffed chapati that has nothing to do with pizza), and sugarcane juice strained with ginger and lime. Eat what is in front of you. Avoid pre-made seafood platters under lights.

Urojo soup — also known as Zanzibar mix. Bhajia, cassava chips and boiled potato in a zesty mango and turmeric broth. $1-$2 at a street stall, and so addictive.

A village cooking class — four hours, $30-$50, generally in a family house near Stone Town or Jambiani You go to the market, then you prepare pilau or coconut curry with someone’s mum. The most underestimated cultural experience on the island.

Lukmaan, Stone Town — a canteen where the locals really eat. Point to what you desire. A lot of food for a few dollars.

Fresh seafood at a beach shack — this morning the fish came in. At Jambiani and Bwejuu you can sometimes buy right from the boats and have it cooked in a hut.

15. Shopping for Handicrafts

Zanzibar shopping beats the usual beach-destination souvenir goods, if you know what’s actually created here. Good buys: kanga and kitenge cloth (the printed cotton wraps with Swahili proverbs around the border); Tingatinga paintings; hand-carved chests and door frames; coconut-shell jewellery; and spices – cloves, cardamom, cinnamon, vanilla and black pepper, sold vacuum-packed at the airport or loose at Darajani.

Be careful of “ebony” carvings which are sometimes dyed oak and avoid anything made of shell, coral or turtle. Export is prohibited and may be seized by customs officers. You should anticipate to bargain in marketplaces – offer around half of the asking price, be nice and be prepared to walk. In the fixed-price shops in Shangani, bargaining is considered impolite.

Good places:Darajani Market for spices and fabric, Gizenga Street for art and sculptures, the Old Fort artisan stalls and the Zanzibar Curio Shop if you want antiques with true pedigree.

16. Kite Surfing

I don’t say that lightly – Paje is one of the best venues in the world to learn kitesurf. It’s a unique confluence of circumstances—a flat shallow lagoon inside a reef, prevailing side-onshore winds, warm water and a bunch of established schools with the right safety boats.

Two seasons. The kaskazi is active from December to February. The stronger, more consistent kusi runs from June to September. Those windows outside are spotty with the wind and you might be spending your week on the beach. Lessons are $60 to $80 an hour, and a full course for beginners to independent riding, generally 9 to 12 hours over three or four days, costs $400 to $600.

Immediately south is Jambiani, with similar conditions and less kites in the air – worth trying if you’re currently riding and want room.

17. Photography Spots

A short list of where the good light and the good frames actually are:

• Stone Town alleys, 7–9 am — low sun slicing between buildings, shopkeepers opening up, no crowds.
• Paje or Jambiani at low tide — the seaweed farmers walking their lines across reflective wet sand. Best in the hour after sunrise.
• Nungwi boatyard, late afternoon — dhow hulls, sawdust, working hands, warm light.
• Kendwa, sunset — the only major west- facing beach. Silhouetted dhows on request from any boat captain.
• The Rock at mid-tide — enough water for the reflection, not so much that the stilts disappear.
• Forodhani after dark — grill smoke, lanterns, motion blur. Push your ISO and shoot wide.

One rule: ask before photographing people, always. A phrase of Swahili and a smile gets you a yes far more often than a lens does. In Stone Town’s residential lanes, assume the answer is no unless you’ve asked.