ZANZIBAR – Know Before You Go

For several years we had been talking about visiting the mysterious spice island of Zanzibar, located just under 6 hrs away by air from our home town of Cape Town, South Africa. So this year when we started looking at where to go for what has now become our annual vacation, after considering a trip to Vietnam or Cambodia we decided to stay on the African continent and finally travel to Zanzibar.

Flights to Zanzibar from Johannesburg average around R 8000/person with local airline Flysafair. Add to that the additional flights from Cape Town to Johannesburg and your cost will be around R 20 000 for two people. Getting into SE Asia is now costing around R 30 000 from Cape Town, and onward flights to Vietnam from Bangkok will add around R 10 000 to the cost, so essentially the flight to Hanoi would have been double the cost of the flight to Zanzibar. So we were happy to do a less costly trip this year to a more local destination – or so we thought 🙂

The flight on Flysafair is not a comfortable flight, as they use the same short-haul aircraft utilised on 2hr local flights for these trips. Seats don’t recline, there is no in-flight entertainment, and space is limited. Food is a cardboard box with a filled roll, tiny bottle of water and energy bar. Flights are always at night, arriving at 12h40 in Zanzibar, and departing at 01h40 for Johannesburg. So you get what you pay for.

We arrived at the Al Minar Hotel in Stone Town at around 03h00, bleary-eyed and ratty. Fortunately it is quite a nice hotel in a quieter part of the ancient town, so we got a good nights sleep before rising at 09h30 to eat what turned out to be one of the best breakfasts in Zanzibar. Of course we didn’t know that at the time and made fun of the chicken sausages supplied in lieu of bacon in this Muslim country. We later dreamed of those little sausages, which proved to be the only meat we would get as part of the breakfasts for the duration of our 25 day stay in Zanzibar 🙂

On this trip I decided to make full use of my little DJI Pocket 2 Creator Combo which I had bought last year but barely shot with. So this blog will be more of a vlog as I will be including the video’s I shot of the trip rather than writing thousands of words to share our experiences. Prior to arriving in Zanzibar we had decided to try and collaborate with several Zanzibarian tour guides, drivers and tour operators during our trip so that we could get a deeper insight into how things worked in Zanzibar, as part of the reason we decided to visit the island was also to explore the possibility of setting up a tourism-related business there in the future. So this was a ‘recce’ as well. So without further ado here are two video’s that we shot within the first week of our stay in Zanzibar which we supplied to the two local colleagues so that they could grow their own businesses…

And here are the video reviews that we shot of the places we visited during our trip…

I hope that you enjoyed watching the video’s, which I think provide a deeper insight into what Zanzibar offers, and doesn’t offer in a far more entertain manner than words can express. We enjoyed most of our time in Zanzibar but it became very apparent that compared to many of the island destinations we have visited over the years, it doesn’t offer good value for money for a South African traveller. Our weakening currency means that we pay around R 20/US dollar, and that makes the predominantly US$ and Euro-priced accommodation and food in Zanzibar quite expensive for a South African. Even though flights are more expensive to SE Asia, accommodation and food is far cheaper and generally better than what is offered in Zanzibar, making SE Asia a better option for South Africans travelling on a moderate budget.

Zanzibar has a fairly poor infrastructure and rampant police corruption which also impacts on the daily experiences of tourists, and the deep poverty of most islanders leads to a desperation by locals to try and get a small piece of the tourist pie by harassing tourists walking in the towns and on beaches at levels we have never experienced anywhere else before. This has a seriously dampening affect on something as simple as a beach walk, which is just impossible to do without vendors and touts tagging along trying to sell you something every single minute in places like Nungwi. For these reasons we feel that for us Zanzibar will be a one-off trip, and we will not easily return there.