Are you planning to visit the beautiful island of Zanzibar with its gorgeous but quiet beaches, but not too sure about how to spend your time there? Look no further! I am sharing my best tips on how to book your Zanzibar day trips, and tell you about my experiences on the day trips Jordi and I went on.
How to book your Zanzibar day trips
I have booked quite a few tours for our time in Zanzibar, and my best tip is just to contact different tour operators before you travel. Let them know which days you are in Zanzibar, what tours you would like to do, and ask them about their price and what exactly is included in this price.
Package deal
Most tour operators will offer you a discount if you book multiple tours with them. Since most tours take between 3 – 4 hours, they will be happy for you to combine two tours in one day. It is essential to understand what is included in the price they offer you, as this will differ per tour operator. I made sure that the transfers to and from our hotel, lunch and snorkelling equipment (if needed) were all included in the price. This saved us from having any unexpected costs during the day, so we could fully enjoy the day trips.
Payment method
Another thing to consider is the payment method. You may end up having to carry a lot of cash around in Zanzibar if your tour operator only accepts cash payments in USD. The tour operator I decided to go for offered us to pay online in advance through a secure link. They confirmed the receipt of our payment in less than an hour after we made the payment.
After having compared the different price offers and payment methods, it all came down to the communication with the various tour operators. For me, the tone and timeliness of the email correspondence are essential, because this tells me a lot about how the company treats its customers.
In the end, I decided to book all our tours with Zanzibar-Tours (not an affiliate link), because of their friendly and timely responses to my emails, their competitive prices and their transparency about costs. The price difference between private tours and group tours wasn’t very much, so I ended up buying almost everything as a private tour. Only Mnemba Atoll was not available as a private tour.
Day trip 1 - Stone Town and Prison Island
Stone Town
While wandering through the streets of Stone Town, we could feel the rich history of this place still being present in its beautiful architecture. Being a trading town on the coast of East Africa, Stone Town is influenced by Arab, Indian and European culture.
I found the Old Fort and the typical big wooden doors of its houses the most beautiful things about Stone Town. Visiting the former slave market was also very impressive, as it shows under which unfortunate circumstances slaves were held before being exported by boat. It is hard to imagine how people could have been so cruel to each other.
Luckily today’s markets are just selling spices and fish. We ended up buying nutmeg at the spice market, although we have no idea how to use it. Another historic site of Stone Town is the house where the legendary Freddie Mercury was born.
Prison Island
From Stone Town, we took a long wooden boat to get to Prison Island. While the island has lovely beaches and blue sea, we were most impressed with the giant tortoises that live on this island.
The Aldabra Giant tortoise is a rare species, and some turtles are over 100 years old. It was nice being able to get close to and feed these beautiful creatures. Fun fact is that the prison on this island was actually never used to house prisoners.
The Prison Island tour included snorkelling, but the combination of the lack of our snorkel skills and the wild waves made us give up on our attempts to snorkel pretty quickly. We were too focused on keeping our snorkel tubes above the waves to see any fish, so we decided to go back to Stone Town instead.
Day trip 2 - Dolphin Swim and Jozani Forest
Dolphin Swim
The dolphin tour starts early, so our driver picked us up from our beach bungalow in Jambiani at 7 am. He drove us to Kizimkazi, where we got our private speedboat with driver to lead us to the wild dolphins. Unfortunately, this tour is not what we were expecting. Each time a group of dolphins showed, they were being chased and circled by tens of speedboats – clearly upsetting the animals and scaring them away.
We watched a group of people from another speedboat trying to swim with the dolphins. This looked more like a dolphin ‘chase’ than a dolphin ‘swim’. No matter how fast the people jumped out of their boat, the dolphins had already left by the time they could reach. As the animals were upset and scared, we didn’t even want to try to swim with them.
We did see a few dolphins from close, which was terrific, but it was not worth all the stress it caused to the animals. When we returned to Kizimkazi, we were welcomed with lunch. We didn’t expect this as it was Ramadan, but it was a nice surprise.
Jozani Forest
Our time in Jozani Forest was much more enjoyable. The monkeys looked a lot more relaxed compared to the dolphins. They didn’t seem to care at all about the people in the forest. We even got a few nice pictures with the monkeys while keeping our distance of course.
It was so amazing to watch the red colobus monkeys with their babies enjoying life in their natural habitat. We also got to visit the mangrove trees in Jozani forest, which create beautiful landscapes. Jozani forest is a must-visit when in Zanzibar.
Day trip 3 - Snorkelling in Mnemba Atoll
Although we were unlucky with our snorkelling experience during our Prison Island tour, we are so glad that we didn’t give up on our snorkelling tour in Mnemba Atoll.
The tour started with a drive from our beach bungalow in Jambiani to Nungwi beach. Compared to Jambiani, Nungwi beach is a lot more touristic. It has several beach clubs serving cocktails and playing music.
From Nungwi beach, we enjoyed a boat tour with a small group of people. Just as we were about to reach Mnemba Atoll, we had the opportunity to snorkel in the calm water.
It was amazing to see so many colourful fishes swimming around us. At some point, I even felt like I was one of them, while swimming around without a care in the world. After a relaxing boat ride back to Nungwi beach, we had lunch with the group.
After lunch, we took the opportunity to take amazing pictures on the beach. The different plants and tree trunks on the beach made for a very picturesque place. We ended the day with a tropical cocktail on a beach swing before the drive back to Jambiani.
Because of the distance between Jambiani and Nungwi beach, this tour took all day. We were therefore not able to combine it with another tour on the same day. It was one of our favourite days in Zanzibar though, so definitely recommendable.
Add to your bucket list:
Book now:
If you’d like to book a Zanzibar tour, check out Viatorย for organised group and private tours:ย
These are affiliate links, so I will be earning commission when you buy through my link. This comes at no extra cost to you, and helps me keeping my website online.