Zanzibar

The island of Zanzibar is a semi autonomous province of Tanzania on Africa's East Coast. The name "Tanzania", which came into being in the early 1960's, is a combination of the original colonial name Tanganyika, Zanzibar and Azania (the ancient Greek and Roman name for the East coast of Africa). There are several islands in the Zanzibar Archipelago, the main island, commonly known as Zanzibar Island, is officially called Unguja, and it’s been inhabited for at least 20 000 years.

Stone Town

We spent 6 nights on the island, starting off our stay in Stone Town, birthplace of Freddy Mercury, and an ancient city with loads of history. The entire city of Stone Town is a Unesco World Heritage Site, and it needs more than the limited time we had, in order to explore all the delights that it has to offer. We stayed only one night, which should have been longer, you need two nights and at least a full day to explore the entire place, there is much I would have liked to see but time just ran out.

Kichanga Beach Lodge

Our next destination was Kichanga Beach Lodge, which is on the East coast of the island, around an hour and a half drive through rural Zanzibar. The lodge has some outstanding qualities, especially the friendly staff and the fact that it’s not crowded like some of the big resorts can get, but, it’s not what I'd call especially upmarket, in fact it was a little run down at the time of our visit.

Fumba Beach Lodge

Fumba is on the West coast of the island, so it doesn’t have the typical white sand beaches on the East, and while it’s also got a rustic vibe, there’s absolutely nothing run down about it. This is rustic done well. Sunsets are simply unbeatable here; there is a wooden deck built into the branches of the baobab tree, which is an excellent spot to sip on your cocktail and watch the sun dipping into the Indian Ocean.

More About Zanzibar

There is a more detailed blog post about our visit on my alternative website, you can read that here.