Zanzibar & the Coast

The week, day by day

1. Day 1

   Arrive — Stone Town

   Met at the airport by our island team, ten minutes to a restored merchant house in the old town. Rooftop dinner as the call to prayer and the church bells overlap the sunset.

   Boutique house, Stone Town

2. Day 2

   Dawn lanes, spice farm, north coast

   Stone Town before the heat: carved doors, the fish market waking, coffee where we drink ours. Then a working spice farm — vanilla vines, pepper, the fruit you cannot name — and lunch cooked from what you picked, before the drive north.

   Beach lodge, Nungwi/Kendwa or Matemwe

3. Day 3

   The exhale

   Nothing scheduled, deliberately. Swim at any hour (we place honeymooners on the tide-free north unless you choose the wilder east), read, sleep, repeat.

4. Day 4

   Mnemba Atoll

   Morning boat to the island’s best reef — turtles, moorish idols, dolphin pods most weeks. Back for a long lunch and a longer nap.

5. Day 5

   Your day

   A couples massage, a kitesurf lesson in Paje, Jozani Forest’s red colobus monkeys — or, respectably, nothing again.

6. Day 6

   The dhow

   A private wooden dhow, sails up, at golden hour — dinner on board, the coast sliding past, the crew singing on the way home. The evening every guest photographs and none capture.

7. Day 7

   Home, rested

   Transfer timed to your flight — with a packed breakfast if it is early, because it is usually early.