7 days in Zanzibar by car: a route that uses the island properly
The week most visitors end up with is one beach, two packaged excursions and a lot of waiting for minibuses.
That is not a criticism of them. It is what happens when you have no transport of your own, because every trip has to be bought as a product with a pickup window attached.
With a car, a week on Zanzibar becomes a different shape. Here is the route we would actually recommend, why it is ordered this way, and how to adjust it.
The shape of the week
Two bases, not one. That is the single decision that changes everything else.
Nights 1 to 2: Stone Town. Close to the airport, no driving needed once parked, and it gets the history and the culture in while you are still adjusting to the heat.
Nights 3 to 4: the north coast. Guaranteed swimming at any state of the tide, and the easiest driving on the island to get there.
Nights 5 to 7: the southeast coast. The landscape, the quiet, lower prices, and the caves and peninsula within easy reach.
The alternative, one beach for seven nights, is simpler and duller. You spend the whole week looking at one horizon.
Why the coasts differ so much: where to stay in Zanzibar
Day 1: Arrive, and do almost nothing
Drive: airport to Stone Town, 20 to 30 minutes.
Collect the car, drive into town, park at the edge and walk in. Do not plan anything else.
Most flights arrive in the afternoon or evening, the heat is disorienting on the first day, and you have just started driving on the left in an unfamiliar car. Walk to the Forodhani Gardens for the evening food market, eat cheaply and well, and go to bed.
What you need to be legal to drive: the Zanzibar driving permit
Day 2: Stone Town on foot
Drive: none.
Darajani Market in the morning while it is busiest. Christ Church Cathedral and the former slave market site, which deserves proper time rather than twenty minutes. The Old Fort. Then wander, which is the actual point of the place.
A guided walking tour in the morning is worth more here than anywhere else on the island, because the buildings do not explain themselves.
Late afternoon is when the light turns the coral rag walls gold and the doors start photographing well.
Full detail: Stone Town Zanzibar
Day 3: North, via a spice farm
Drive: Stone Town to a spice farm, 30 to 45 minutes. Farm to Kendwa or Nungwi, around an hour.
Leave mid-morning, stop at a spice farm arranged directly rather than through a hotel desk, and continue north afterwards. This is the day that most obviously repays having your own vehicle, because the same two stops as packaged tours would be two separate half days.
Arrive on the north coast in the afternoon with the rest of the day free.
How to arrange it without paying three times over: Zanzibar spice tours
Day 4: The north coast
Drive: minimal.
Swimming, which here you can do at any hour rather than around a tide table. Kendwa has the better water, Nungwi has more going on.
If snorkelling matters to you, this is the day for a boat to the Mnemba reef, which launches from the northeast rather than from Nungwi itself. Book it the day before.
Otherwise: the dhow builders at Nungwi, the turtle sanctuary, and a sunset that happens over water because you are on the western side of the northern tip.
Day 5: South and east, through Jozani
Drive: north coast to Jozani, around 2 hours. Jozani to Paje or Jambiani, 20 to 30 minutes.
Leave early. This is the longest drive of the week and you want Jozani in the morning, when the red colobus are active and before the resort tour groups arrive.
Ninety minutes in the forest and on the mangrove boardwalk, then continue east to your southeast base and arrive in time for a late lunch.
Slow right down on the road through the park boundary. The monkeys cross at ground level and are hit regularly.
Full detail: Jozani Forest
Day 6: Build the day around the tide
Drive: short, or none.
This is where the southeast coast asks something of you. At high water, swim. At low water, the sea is several hundred metres out and you do something else.
Check the day's tide times with your hotel on arrival and plan accordingly.
If low tide falls in the morning: walk out across the flats, watch the seaweed farming, then drive inland to Kuza or Maalum cave for a swim through the hottest hours.
If low tide falls in the afternoon: swim first, then drive to Michamvi Kae for the only west-facing sunset on this side of the island.
Why the water behaves this way: Zanzibar tides
Day 7: The Rock, or nothing at all
Drive: Pingwe is around 30 minutes from Paje. Airport is around an hour from the southeast coast.
If you have booked The Rock, this is the day. Reserve well ahead, and note that the tide decides whether you wade across or take the boat.
If you have not, the better use of a last full day is usually to do nothing in particular on a beach you have started to know.
Leave a comfortable margin for the drive to the airport. Roads here do not let you make up time.
If you have five days
Cut the north coast, not Stone Town.
Two nights in Stone Town, three on the southeast, with Jozani and a spice farm folded into the transfer between them. You lose guaranteed swimming, which matters, but you keep the two things that could not be anywhere else in the world.
The alternative is two nights Stone Town and three in the north, which gives you the swimming and loses the landscape. Both work. Trying to fit all three into five nights does not.
If you have ten days
Add a third base rather than extending the first two.
Matemwe on the northeast is the obvious candidate, both because it is the launch point for the best snorkelling on the island and because it is quiet in a way the north and southeast are not.
Ten days is also enough to justify Pemba, Zanzibar's sister island, though that is a separate flight or ferry and your rental car stays here.
What to cut first, and what not to
Cut excursions before you cut days in one place. Three excursions in a week is plenty. Five is a schedule, not a holiday.
Do not cut Stone Town. It is the only part of the island that is not interchangeable with a tropical coast somewhere else.
Do not try to see both coasts in a day trip. It is physically possible and it wastes both.
Be honest about driving appetite. If nobody in your group wants to drive two hours on day five, take the five day shape instead and enjoy it more.
In the rainy season, change two things
During the long rains from March to May, the route holds but two adjustments matter.
Take four wheel drive if either base is reached by an unsurfaced track, which is most of the southeast and much of the northeast.
And build slack into transfer days. The Jozani drive that takes two hours in August can take considerably longer in April between reduced speeds and waiting out squalls.
Detail: driving in the rainy season
Frequently asked questions
How many days do you need in Zanzibar? Seven nights is comfortable and lets you use two bases. Five works with one compromise. Anything under four is essentially a beach stay with one excursion attached.
Is a week in Zanzibar too long? No, provided you move at least once. A week in a single resort is long. A week across two coasts with a car is not.
Do I need a car for a Zanzibar itinerary like this? For this shape, yes. The route depends on moving between bases on your own schedule and on stopping at Jozani and a spice farm during transfers, which packaged tours cannot combine.
What is the best order to do Zanzibar in? Stone Town first, while you are adjusting and close to the airport, then beaches. It also means your last days are the restful ones.
Can I do this itinerary in the rainy season? Yes, with four wheel drive if your accommodation is reached by a sand track, and with extra time allowed on transfer days.
This week only works with your own vehicle.
We deliver to the airport, handle the driving permit with your booking, and will tell you before you commit whether the access roads to both your bases need four wheel drive for your dates.
Drive times are estimates in dry conditions. If a leg of this route took you noticeably longer, tell us and we will adjust it.