REAL TIPS, LOCAL INSIGHTS, AND THE OCCASIONAL BAD DECISION, FROM TWO FRIENDS WHO CALL ZANZIBAR HOME.
So... Why Zanzibar?
Zanzibar is one of those places that is surprisingly difficult to explain.
Some people come here for the beaches. Others come for the turquoise water, spice farms, diving, kite surfing, sunsets, seafood, history, or even to find love (haha! Good luck!).
What makes Zanzibar special isn't any one thing. It's the strange mix of everything. One moment you're sipping a cocktail on a white sand beach, the next you're wandering through 500-year-old alleyways in Stone Town, and later that evening you're sharing grilled octopus with someone who somehow knows everyone on the island.
Things don't always work exactly how you expect here.
Sometimes that's frustrating. Most of the time, that's part of the charm.
Zanzibar is beautiful, fascinating, occasionally confusing, and almost always memorable. That's exactly why so many people fall in love with it.
Why This Blog Exists
One of us was born here. The other came for a season and somewhere between the power cuts and the sunsets, this island became home.
Between Noah's lifetime connection to Zanzibar and Carla's journey from visitor to resident, we've answered the same questions hundreds of times:
Where should I stay? Is it safe? How much cash should I bring? Can I work remotely from Zanzibar? What's the best beach? Is it worth doing a safari?
Why do I need so many permits? Is this insurance thing for real?
Eventually we decided it would be easier to write it all down.
So that's what Zanziblog is.
The guide we wish we would have had starting our journeys. Honest, practical, up-to-date information from people who actually live here and experience the island every day.
Between the two of us, we've spent more than 25 years on the island exploring its beaches, businesses, hidden corners, tourist hotspots (and tourist traps), restaurants, villages, and everything in between.
Whether you're a first-time visitor, a seasoned Africa traveller, a digital nomad looking for your next base, a solo female traveller planning an adventure, someone considering a move to the island, or even a foreign investor trying to understand how things really work here, our goal is simple:
To help you make the most of Zanzibar while avoiding a few of the mistakes we made along the way.
Who Are These People Anyway?
A fair question.
The internet is full of travel blogs written by people who spent six days at an all-inclusive resort and came home an expert on East Africa.
Zanziblog is a bit different.
Behind it are two people who actually live here: one who was born on the island and knows it from the inside out, and one who arrived as a tourist and never quite managed to leave.
Between us, we've made most of the mistakes, asked most of the embarrassing questions, and survived enough adventures to earn the knowledge we're about to share with you.
So before you take advice from two strangers on the internet, you should probably know who those strangers are.
Meet Noah
Half Northern European, half Northern Zanzibari, Noah was apparently genetically engineered to survive both -30°C and 35°C, and somehow chose to shovel sand rather than snow.
Having grown up on the island and spent years abroad, he's travelled to more than 40 countries and built a career in hospitality, tourism, technology, and entrepreneurship. Which basically means he spends his days solving the exact problems travellers have before they even know they have them.
As a business owner and entrepreneur, he's also had a front-row seat to the joys, frustrations, surprises, and frequent headaches that come with building things on this wonderfully chaotic little island.
Luckily, he has a few advantages: he speaks the language, understands the culture, and has built the kind of network where somebody always seems to know somebody who knows somebody.
The good news for you is that he's not much of a gatekeeper.
From investing and building projects to hiring staff, dealing with bureaucracy, understanding local business culture, and generally figuring out how things actually work here, he'll be sharing what he's learned from experience, including a few expensive lessons that you're welcome to learn from second-hand.
He also knows which beach is best in which season, what things should cost, where to find the best urojo, and owns an unhealthy number of travel gadgets.
Meet Carla
Born near Barcelona, adopted by Zanzibar.
Carla first arrived in Zanzibar in 2021 as a tourist, just like many of the people reading this blog. She fell in love with the island, kept coming back, and eventually, she did what many visitors jokingly talk about but never actually do: she moved here.
A chance encounter became a job offer, and suddenly she found herself learning about residency permits, power cuts and generators, navigating visas, apartments, bank accounts, language barriers, and all the other little adventures that come with building a life on a tropical island.
Today she works in hospitality marketing on the north coast and shares her home with three dogs, one cat, and a boyfriend (which is basically the same as having five children), and her Swahili vocabulary grows daily, although locals still occasionally switch to English out of sympathy.
What makes Carla's perspective unique is that she remembers exactly what it's like to arrive here for the first time. She knows which questions tourists are too embarrassed to ask, when a price is negotiable, which mistakes newcomers always make, and which things nobody tells you until you've already learned them the hard way.
Zanzibar hasn't always been kind to her. The island has occasionally tested her patience and confused her, she has gone from tourist to resident, and from asking all the questions to becoming the person answering them. She's experienced the excitement, the culture shock, and the occasional "what am I doing here?" crisis. But through trial, error, and a healthy sense of humour, she's learned how things really work, and how to avoid many of the frustrations that catch newcomers by surprise.
So if you've ever wondered what it's really like to visit Zanzibar, live here, work here, or survive a trip to immigration without losing your sanity, she's probably got a story about it.
More Than Just Our Opinions
While many articles on Zanziblog are written by us, not all of them are.
From time to time you'll find contributions from tourists, expats, locals, guides, photographers, divers, digital nomads, hospitality professionals, business owners, and other people who know a thing or two about life on the island.
Some have lived here for decades. Others only spent a week here and somehow managed to have the adventure of a lifetime.
We think both perspectives matter.
After all, Zanzibar means something slightly different to everyone who visits it.
And that's probably how it should be.
Karibu to Zanziblog.
P.S. If you are a business in Zanzibar and feel this blog is useful for your guests, feel free to link us on your website, free of charge! Help us help more people :)
Enough About Us.
Let's Talk About You.
You came here for Zanzibar, not our life stories.
Whether you're planning your first trip, or seriously googling "how to move to a tropical island" at 2am... there's probably an article in here for you.
Beaches, budgets, bureaucracy, where to eat, what to skip, and the questions you were too embarrassed to ask anyone else.
Go on, have a look around. That's what it's all for.
