Things to do in Jambiani

If you ever find yourself in Jambiani we have a few things we would highly recommend. First one is, try and eat out in a traditional restaurant off the strip in the village. Last night we ventured to ‘Fadhil restaurant’ which is a couple of km’s along the beach and into the village. It is essentially the home of a beautiful soul Fadhil who is a chef and he has converted his living area into a sand pit with a few plastic tables. IT IS NOTHING FANCY décor wise, in fact a little daunting to enter but after reading glowing reviews we had to give it a chance.
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Upon arriving we were greeted by Fadhil’s wife who presented us a note pad with a few dishes written on it. From there we chose, and 2 young boys sped off to go and buy the catch of the day and calamari – that’s how fresh we are talking. 

I ordered the coconut calamari and Leo the catch of the day with a tomato and avo salad. We had read that there is normally a big wait, so we grabbed some beers and watched the new series on Netflix on our phones. We were the only ones there so it was perfect, quiet and every so often a local child would pop in to say ‘Jambo’ (hello) or a family of goats would hurry past, it was quite the experience. Anyway, the food was out of this world good and even though the portions were HUGE we were offered free dessert which we politely agreed to! Fried banana and dark chocolate sauce – delightful! Take a look – so delicious!

​We also did a half day trip to the Jozani forest today which is about 30 minutes away and a $30USD taxi journey return. I mainly wanted to go to try and get a glimpse of the Red Columbus monkeys which are endemic to Zanzibar with only 5000 remaining. Great news is that we managed to see them – bad news is IT IS NOT WORTH IT.
I’ll explain why. When you get there, you are charged $10USD entry, which is fine and then assigned a local guide to walk you through the forest and search for monkeys and then head over to the Mangrove forest. The whole trip takes about 2 hours and we didn’t realise we would have a guide which already put a dampener on the day. We can’t stand guided tours. 

We got back this arvo and it was low tide, so we made the walk about 1km straight out into the lagoon and my god – it is stunning! Think of the most pristine crystal-clear waters mixed with white sand and beautiful sun, that’s what we had! It was just magical. We even got a quick fly in with the drone to show the whole surrounding area. Make sure this is a must do!

So, overall Jambiani has been great. We loved it because we made it good. The staff here are very helpful but useless, the Jozani forest is great for wildlife but the staff let the place down, the best places to eat are outside the resorts and make sure you walk, walk, walk as much of the beach as you can – it’s the best!