Zan Maldive Tours and Safaris

Experience category: Food and cooking

  • Zanzibar Spice Farm Tour

    Zanzibar has been called the Spice Island for two centuries, and a morning on a working farm shows you why. Families here have grown spices for generations, and the plots outside town still produce cloves, vanilla, nutmeg, cardamom, cinnamon, black pepper, lemongrass and turmeric alongside jackfruit, papaya, coconut and citrus.

    This is a walking tour rather than a museum visit. Your guide, who grew up on this land, pulls a root, scrapes a bark or splits a pod and hands it to you. You smell each spice before you are told its name. You learn which plants go into the local dishes you have been eating, which go into herbal remedies still used across the island, and which appear in weddings and ceremonies.

    Along the way the farm team demonstrates coconut climbing and weaving, and lays out a tasting of seasonal tropical fruit. Most guests leave with a small bag of spices bought directly from the growers, at farm prices rather than market prices.

    The farm sits a short drive from Stone Town, so this excursion combines easily with a Stone Town walk, Prison Island or Jozani Forest to make a full day.

  • Zanzibar Cooking Class

    Zanzibari food is the clearest record of the island’s history. Indian spice, Arab technique, Portuguese ingredients and African staples meet in dishes like pilau, biryani, urojo soup and coconut fish curry.

    This class puts you in the kitchen rather than at the table. A local chef takes you through ingredient selection, preparation, the order in which spices go into a dish and why, and how the flavours are balanced at the end. The teaching is hands-on and unhurried, and the group stays small enough for everyone to cook rather than watch.

    Beyond the cooking, the session includes the wider setting: Swahili dress, local music and dance, and conversation with the family hosting you. You then sit down and eat what you have made.

    The class works for complete beginners and for confident cooks. It is a good option for a rainy afternoon, for families, and for anyone who wants to take a genuine skill home rather than a souvenir.

  • The Rock Restaurant Experience

    The Rock sits on a coral outcrop in the Indian Ocean, a short distance off the white sand of Michamvi Pingwe on the south-east coast of Unguja. It is one of the most photographed restaurants in the world, and the setting is genuinely as unusual as the pictures suggest.

    How you reach it depends on the tide. At low tide you walk across the sand and rock from the beach. At high tide a small boat runs you over from the shore, usually at no extra charge, and the building appears to float.

    The kitchen focuses on seafood, and the atmosphere is relaxed and romantic rather than formal. It suits a long lunch, a sunset dinner, an anniversary or a proposal, more than a quick meal.

    We handle the part most visitors find difficult: the table. The restaurant is small and books out well ahead in high season. We reserve for you, arrange return transfers from your hotel anywhere on the island, and time your arrival to the tide.

  • Stone Town and Spice Farm

    One of our most requested full-day combinations, and a good introduction to what makes Zanzibar different from any other beach destination.

    The morning covers Stone Town on foot with your own guide: Darajani market, the former slave market, the Old Fort, and the seafront views of the House of Wonders and the Sultan’s Palace. Your guide fills in the people behind the buildings, from Princess Salme to Farrokh Bulsara, and helps you bargain in the craft and souvenir shops tucked into the narrow lanes.

    After a morning of history the afternoon explains the island’s other name. A short drive from Stone Town brings you to the spice farms, where pepper, cloves, nutmeg, vanilla, cinnamon, cardamom and turmeric grow alongside tropical fruit. This is a walking tour on a working farm: your guide pulls, scrapes and splits the plants as you go, so you smell each spice before you are told what it is.

    You finish knowing how the spices you have been eating all week are grown, used in local medicine and used in ceremony, and usually with a bag of them bought at farm prices.

  • Spice Farm and Prison Island

    Land and sea in one day, and a good pairing for anyone who wants the island’s two signature experiences without a long drive.

    The morning runs in the countryside, on a working spice farm where cloves, vanilla, nutmeg, cardamom, cinnamon and black pepper grow beside tropical fruit. The two-hour walk is hands on. Your guide handles the plants as you go, and explains how each spice is used in Zanzibari cooking, in herbal medicine and in ceremony. Fruit is cut and served as you walk.

    In the afternoon you head to Stone Town to catch the boat over to Changuu Island, about thirty minutes across the channel. There you visit the foundation caring for the colony of Aldabra giant tortoises, walk through the 1893 prison and quarantine buildings, and then have time to swim, snorkel and sunbathe on the small white beach.

    Pack your swimwear under your clothes in the morning so the afternoon runs without a change of plan.

  • Spice Farm and Jozani Forest

    The best land-based day on the island, and the right choice for guests more interested in nature and farming than in boats.

    The morning starts in Jozani Chwaka Bay National Park, home of the endangered Zanzibar red colobus monkey and the last substantial piece of the groundwater forest once covering Unguja. Bush babies, duikers, butterflies and forest birds live in the same trees. Keep your eyes on the canopy and your guide will find the troops. The walk finishes on the mangrove boardwalk crossing the tidal forest.

    The afternoon runs on a working spice farm a short drive from Stone Town. Pepper, cloves, nutmeg, vanilla and cinnamon grow here alongside herbs and tropical fruit. Your guide handles the plants as you walk, so you taste and smell everything at the source, and explains how each spice reaches the local kitchen, the herbal medicine chest and the ceremonies at the heart of Zanzibari culture.

    Fruit is cut and served, and there is time at the farm shop before the drive back.

  • Spice Farm, Prison Island and Nakupenda Sandbank

    The walking spice tour is one of the most popular excursions in Zanzibar, and for good reason. The island was once among the world’s leading producers of clove, nutmeg and cinnamon, and the organic farms still grow a wide variety of plants through the year.

    This day starts there, on foot in a shamba, with your guide showing you how the spices, herbs and fruit grow and are harvested. You smell and taste clove, lemongrass, nutmeg, cinnamon, turmeric, vanilla, coconut, papaya, chilli, black pepper, jackfruit, cardamom, cassava and orange as you walk.

    From the farm you go on to Prison Island, where you hear the history of the 1893 building and meet the colony of giant tortoises. Then the boat sails to Nakupenda Sandbank for a seafood lunch, swimming and time in the shade on a strip of white sand surrounded by turquoise water.

    It is a long day covering land and sea, and the best value combination we run for anyone with a single free day.

  • Stone Town and Dhow Sunset Cruise

    Combining the Stone Town walking tour with a dhow sunset cruise gives you the best of the town and the water in one afternoon and evening, and finishes with the part most day tours miss.

    The walk starts in the afternoon, when the light in the old lanes is at its best. Your guide covers the former slave market, the Old Fort, the House of Wonders and the seafront, mixing the history with the stories of the people who lived here, and helps you bargain in the craft shops.

    As the afternoon closes you board a traditional dhow. The boat heads out along the coast and turns so everyone has a clear view as the sun goes down over the water. Soft drinks and seasonal fruit are served on board.

    Back on land the day ends at Forodhani Gardens, where the night food market sets up along the seafront: grilled seafood, Zanzibar pizza, sugar cane juice and a crowd of local families. Missing it would be a shame, and this is the tour built around not missing it.