Anyone been to Zanzibar?

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LollyGP

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Has anyone been to Zanzibar recently? I am going for 2weeks in December and will be staying in Kendwa. I need some advice on the prices of food&drinks, diving, fishing etc
Also any tips, warnings and recommendations would be much appreciated.
 
Went last year December was very nice. The whole place is very rural everywhere, I'm not sure where the place is that you're staying but if it's like our hotel which was in the middle of nowhere don't expect to be able to walk. The local transport is dodgey so make sure you have a travel agency taxi available to you to use.

Most tours are quoted in dollars. If you do tours through a local travel agency guy you can do 2 or 3 different things and they will give you big discounts.
Diving was about $100.00. Other items like swimming with dolphins etc is about $50-$75. If you do like 3 together in one day they will give you them for about $125 per person or so.

Try and sample the local foods. Even going to their local restaurants and shops will be alot cheaper. The hotel I was at wanted roughly $5 for a coke. You can pick it up for less than $1 at the local shops. Same thing with all foods. Try get out to some of the nicer local restaurants (some nice ones on the beaches). I got giant prawns etc for roughly R70.00 - this would have costed about R150+ here in SA.

Things to do:
* Diving
* Snorkelling (Also nice is to do a sunset cruise and snorkelling - SOOO worth it! - take some bread with for the fishies)
* Go to Jozani Forest to see the monkeys - managed to touch some - very cute!
* Go to the spice factory - more just a field full of spices (was expecting a building but it's just a plantation but still very cool)
* Swim with dolphins (there seem to be quite a few - were 2 big groups when we went - managed to even touch one but that was lucky)
* Go to Tortoise Island to see the giant tortoises.
* Go for a tour of Stone Town (quite nice)

Take local currency (Tanzanian Shillings) with you so you can get better prices. It's easier for them to rip you off with Dollars/Euros.
Feel free to tell them that you are from South Africa and our money aint worth squat otherwise they try to charge you $50 for the equivalent R25.00 Mr Price type shirts etc. Also be ready to do alot of telling people "No Thanks!" like you do here to all the guys at the robots, everyone will wanna sell you their crap.
 
I was in Kendwa rocks this July, it is a beautiful place. For a tip, when trading with the arabs always trade in dollars, when trading with the locals go over to chilling. Also ask them for a Mukula price it basically means the local price in Swahili, they do overcharge you if you're white. The local traders can be bargained with. I recommend doing the spice tour, snorkelling and the friday night parties at Kendwa rocks. There are most probably going to be more foreigners than locals during December. At kenwa, behind the Italian bar you can go into the rural areas, there is a local black entrepreneur over there that sells you food for cheaper then at the hotels. If you want to exchange money go to Barkley's in Dar Es Salam it is about 260 schillings for 1 rand. 1600 on the dollar. Do not exchange at the hotels.
 
O and it is about R7.50 for a beer, Drink Kilomanjaro Lager, it is their version of windhoek. Weed is about R5-10 per joint and it is locally grown.

you can basically lie on the kendwa beach and the waiters will come and help you, if they see your foreign they think you have money. Some of them also do snorkelling tours. I went snorkelling at bongyoyo island which is off the coast of Dar es Salam. It is above a shipwreck, but there are many other places in and around Zanzibar to do so. The South Africans all live in a place called Oysterbay in Dar es Salam. Hell even some of the waiters spoke a bit of Afrikaans to me when I was there.

You can also go and see the old slave market inside zanzibar, the market place is better at night. But that is in the old town, Kenwda is in the new town so it is about $50 trip from the old to the new one per taxi. The taxi drivers can also be bargained for, I paid one of them R100 to take 4 of us from one side of the island to the other and to wait there for 7 hours to drive us back.

Zanzibar is about 3 basics, sex, alcohol and food.
 
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DefecteD said:
Is the stuff any good?
And how do you go about buying? or does it get offered?
Click to expand...

If you go onto the spice tour you notice one dagga plantjie, one spice plant. I thought it was legal in Zanzibar (it might as well be), it basically grows in most of the local's gardens, it is purely home grown, I myself don't do any drugs, but my friends said it was good stuff.

O and all the cops can be bribed in Zanzibar, you fix it with R2000 sjillings, which is basically R4.20 per bribe. Life is really cheap. It is more expensive to smoke weed than bribe a cop.

The local Restaurant dealer sells most of the weed (I'm under the impression that is how he makes his money)
 
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Thanks guys this is very informative.

We are staying at White Sands Beach Hotel which is next to Kendwa Rocks (tried to get accomo at Kendwa rocks but all places in Kendwa were fully booked) I heard that Kendwa rocks has a FMP...

Is it possible to snorkel at Kendwa beach or are there any other snorkeling beaches close by? i was considering taking my soft gear with to save money and just go out on my own, is it a waste?
I definitely wanna do a few dives and the swimming with the dolphins sounds awesome.

Pity about the price of beers, I'm used to spending $0,50 for a draft, is the grass any good there?

We will also be spending 2nights in Stone Town, any recommendations on cheep and cheerful accomo there? also what is a good area of Stone Town to stay in?

I'm so looking forward to 2weeks of those 3basics, sounds like my kinda paradise ;) Now i gotta pray that the $ drops
 
when I went swimming with the dolphins we didn't have any dolphins so I would like to go back for it. In Stone down I stayed at the new-africa hotel, it is relatively cheap. Stone town is part of the old city, I basically visited the slave market, the museums and the market place in one day. There isn't that much to do in the stone down. Most of the stuff at the market place can be bought here as well, its those arts and crafts, The world is also very globalization, therefore I wouldn't put spending hight on my priorities.

However I would just book in at kendwa rocks and take the taxi to the old town back and forth, it really isn't worth paying extra money to stay the night in there. I stayed in the backpackers at kendwa rocks. You can't snorkel there exactly, but most of the guides on the beaches knows where the best snorkelling sites and where the dolphins go. Two of my friends who were divers took their gear with them, it was worth it for them, but I myself don't know jack about diving so I was satisfied with the gear they provided.
 
DefecteD said:
More details?
;)
Click to expand...

Many of the Europeans girls go there for the African experience, however I might not be your traditional black African, but they were happy to accept experience from the boerseun.
 
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