Why rent a car in Zanzibar
Stone Town's tangle of coral-stone alleys, carved wooden doors and the old House of Wonders is dense enough to fill a couple of days on foot alone. But the real case for a rental car is everything beyond it. Nungwi, on the island's northern tip, has the calmest, most swimmable beaches on Unguja and a harbour where wooden dhows are still built by hand. Paje and Jambiani, on the east coast, are where Zanzibar's kitesurfing scene lives, with reef-protected lagoons that turn shallow at low tide. In between, Jozani Chwaka Bay National Park protects the last patch of the island's native forest and the red colobo monkey, found nowhere else on Earth, and most visits pair it with a nearby spice-farm tour.
Shared dala-dala minibuses connect Stone Town to the main towns, but they leave when full, take the long way round picking up passengers, and rarely go door to door once you're past the main routes. With your own car you can string Jozani and Paje together in one day, since they sit close to each other in the island's south-centre, or spend a full day heading north to Nungwi and back at your own pace. Nungwi is roughly a ninety-minute drive from Stone Town, Paje about an hour, and Jozani around forty-five minutes — short enough that even a rental picked up for just a couple of days pays for itself in what you get to see.
