Overview
Experience the ultimate Indian Ocean experience, with its fascinating historical Stone Town and magnificent sandy beaches with fringing coral reefs offering you with the world class watersports including scuba diving, snorkeling, and deep sea fishing, kayaking, windsurfing, waterskiing and sailing on traditional local dhows. Zanzibar is an archipelago made up of Zanzibar and Pemba Islands, and several islets. It is located in the Indian Ocean, about 25 miles from the Tanzanian coast, and 6° south of the equator. Zanzibar Island (known locally as Unguja, but as Zanzibar internationally) is 60 miles long and 20 miles wide, occupying a total area of approximately 650 square miles.
Places to visit
Stone town
One can spend many idle hours and days just wandering through the fascinating labyrinth of narrow streets and alleyways of Stone Town. This may not have a particularly romantic namebut it is the old city and cultural heart of Zanzibar, little has changed in the last 200 years it is fabled town where history appears to stand still. A place of winding alleys, bustling bazaars, mosques and grand Arab houses whose original owners vied with each other over the extravagance of their dwellings and very much a real community, where real people live and work. Most of the houses that can be seen today were built using coralline rock in the 19th century when Zanzibar was one of the most important trading centres in the Indian Ocean region.
Spice Plantations
The history would be incomplete without the cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, pepper and many other spices in Zanzibar which brought the Sultans of Oman and the beginnings of the infamous slave trade. They can be seen in the plantations just outside Zanzibar town, and a good tour includes opportunities to dazzle the senses with fresh spices. Visitors will be fascinated by the sheer number of spices produced and their incredible value for many ailments. This is also the cheapest place to purchase spices and spice oils.
Diving
Zanzibar is reputed to have some of the best diving in the world, and the coral reef structures that surround Unguja and Pemba ensure that the marine life is abundant.
Good visibility (20 – 60 metres) and a year-round average water temperature of 27°c ensure that you enjoy your Zanzibar diving experience, and also present an ideal opportunity for learning to dive or upgrading your diving qualification since diving in Zanzibar isn’t restricted to beginners.
Experienced scuba divers can enjoy exciting wall dives, night dives and drift dives. In deeper waters, lush coral gardens often stretch as far as the eye can see, and large game fish (barracuda, kingfish, tuna and wahoo) hunt together with large Napoleonic wrasse, graceful manta rays and sharks. Shallower waters are the playground of tropical fish, including a huge variety of Indo-Pacific marine fauna.
