Zanzibar

Zanzibar International Airport (ZNZ) is 6km from Stone Town. Walk immediately into the labyrinth — Stone Town's lanes are too narrow for cars and the correct way to arrive is on foot, getting lost in the alleyways, following the smell of spices and the sound of the Qu'ran from the mosques. The House of Wonders (Beit-el-Ajaib) was the first building in East Africa to have electricity and the first to have an elevator — now a museum of Swahili coastal culture. The Old Fort (Arab Fort) facing the seafront is the oldest surviving building in Stone Town, built by the Omani Arabs in 1699-1701 on the site of a Portuguese chapel. The Forodhani Gardens waterfront night market comes alive at sunset: street food vendors selling Zanzibari pizza (a local invention — a thin egg pancake stuffed with meat, cheese, and vegetables), octopus, and fresh sugar cane juice.

A spice plantation tour in the island's interior is one of Zanzibar's essential experiences. Zanzibar was the world's largest clove producer for most of the 19th and 20th centuries; the plantation tours visit groves of cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, vanilla, lemongrass, and turmeric, with guides who blindfold you and ask you to identify each spice by smell alone. Lunch at the plantation — a multi-dish Zanzibari feast cooked on wood fires in a banana-leaf serving style. In the afternoon, visit the Freddie Mercury Museum on Kenyatta Road — a small but genuinely moving tribute to Farrokh Bulsara, who was born here in 1946 and whose family home and school are nearby. Mercury's Bar in Stone Town is the most atmospheric bar in East Africa. Evening: the sunset dhow cruise from Stone Town's dhow harbor — a traditional carved wooden boat sailing through the sunset.

Transfer north (45 minutes from Stone Town) to Nungwi — the village at the northern tip of the island, known as the dhow-building center of the Indian Ocean and surrounded by the best beaches on the island. Nungwi itself has a beach facing west (sunset facing) and the turquoise lagoon of Mnarani Natural Aquarium — a tidal pool where green turtles are kept for research and feeding. Kendwa Beach, just south of Nungwi, is considered the finest beach on the island's north coast — a wide crescent of white sand facing open ocean with excellent swimming at all tidal stages (unlike the east coast, which has a significant tidal variation). The water is shallow, warm (27-29°C), and crystal clear. Sunset from the Kendwa Rocks beach bar — the most famous sunset spot in Zanzibar. Check into your beach resort and order fresh grilled lobster for dinner.

Drive south along the west coast to Kizimkazi — a fishing village at the island's southern tip and the most reliable place in East Africa to swim with wild spinner and bottlenose dolphins. The dolphin pods that inhabit the Kizimkazi channel have been swimming with tourists for decades and are habituated but not domesticated; the experience of slipping into warm turquoise water and finding yourself surrounded by a pod of 20 spinner dolphins is genuinely extraordinary. The Kizimkazi Dimbani mosque, built in the 12th century, is the oldest mosque in East Africa — its inscription (1107 AD) is the oldest dated Islamic inscription in sub-Saharan Africa. Jozani Forest, 15km north of Kizimkazi, is the only national park in Zanzibar and home to the endemic and endangered Kirk's red colobus monkey — 300 individuals survive in the forest and approach visitors within meters.

The east coast of Zanzibar is the Indian Ocean coast — a long, continuous beach of extraordinary white sand backed by coconut palms and casuarina trees, with the coral reef 300 meters offshore creating a shallow turquoise lagoon that is the island's finest for water sports. Paje has become the kitesurfing capital of the Indian Ocean — the consistent southeast trade winds from June to September create ideal conditions, and the steady onshore breeze without the chop of open ocean makes it one of the most accessible kitesurfing destinations in the world. The reef's edge at low tide, when the water in the lagoon retreats to leave pools of extraordinary clarity, is one of the most beautiful coastal formations in East Africa. Bwejuu, 5km north of Paje, is quieter and has excellent simple Zanzibari restaurants directly on the beach serving fresh tuna and barracuda.

Mnemba Atoll, a small sandy island and coral atoll 3km off the northeast coast of Zanzibar, is the finest snorkeling and diving location in the archipelago and one of the best in the western Indian Ocean. The atoll's private beach (Mnemba Island Lodge, the most exclusive resort in Tanzania, is here) is accessible to day visitors for snorkeling. The coral garden around the atoll has exceptional diversity — over 600 species of fish, 40 species of coral, hawksbill turtles, barracuda, and in season (October-March) whale sharks. A full-day snorkeling excursion from the east coast takes 45 minutes by speedboat to reach Mnemba and includes three snorkeling sessions in different parts of the reef. Return via the sandbank of Nakupenda ("I Love You" in Swahili) — a temporary sandbank that appears and disappears with the tides, used for champagne beach lunches.

Zanzibar Airport (ZNZ) connects to Dar es Salaam (20 minutes, many daily flights) for international connections, and some carriers now fly direct to Middle East and European hubs. A final morning on the east coast beach, watching the Indian Ocean change color as the light strengthens through the morning, is the correct farewell to Zanzibar. Take home whole cloves (the freshest available anywhere), Zanzibari carved wooden boxes, Swahili glass bead jewelry, and a bottle of local Konyagi spirit for the memory of those sunsets. Zanzibar has been called the Spice Island for 1,000 years and the name still applies — the smell of the island, a mixture of cloves, the ocean, and frangipani flowers, stays with you long after you leave.