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Zanzibar

Continental breakfast is served in the form of the buffet at the La Shira restaurant.

You can enjoy your morning coffee and the buffet from 7.30 AM to 10:30 AM. Nevertheless, if you feel like having an intimate morning, upon your request breakfast can be served at your villa with an in-house service. Please ask our staff about the details.

The La Shira restaurant offers an all-day menu with variety of seafood dishes, as well as meat courses and pastas. After dinner try our dessert-of-the-day.

While staying in Jambiani, we recommend you to dine at local restaurants. A list of recommended places is available upon request. Please remember that waiting time at the restaurant of an hour or above is very much acceptable.

Places worth visiting while on the east coast:

• Okala’s Restaurant (Jambiani) – local cuisine with seafood/vegetable courses prepared on the fire
• Seconda Stella a Destra (Jambiani) – excellent, full of taste Italian pizza made by true Italians, who have moved to Zanzibar 15 years ago
• Kitete Restaurant (Paje) – fresh seafood prepared in the local Swahili style
• Pakacha (Bwejuu) – Swahili style restaurant
• Upendo (Dongwe) – seafood served in international way

While in Stone Town you should visit:

• Taperia – serving delicious tapas, a definite must if you are a tapas lover
• La Taverna – Italian style restaurant
• 6 degrees – European cuisine
• Forodhani Garden – enjoy the evening at the biggest street food market offering the best of Swahili kitchen
• House of Spices – mixing international and local dishes in a great style
• Maru Maru – the place for connoisseurs of Indian dishes
• Lukmaan – tasty Swahili style dishes in a great variety

Before you arrive, we will provide you with information on which of our locations you will be accommodated. There is also where the check-in will be held. If for some reason this information does not reach you, head to our office in the Kaskazini location. After your passports being scanned, we will inform you in which of the villa or apartment you will be accommodated.

Check-in time is 2 PM, while the latest check-out is at 11 AM.

All bills for meals and drinks, ordered at the restaurant, can be set on your account named after the villa or apartment you have been accommodated in. This name can be found on your keychain. We kindly ask you to sign each bill received from the waiter. Those will be added to your final account and can be settled on the check-out.

Please note, that at Jambiani Villas we do not charge any fees on credit card payments.

In the villa, a shopping list can be found. From this, you can order certain products, which will be brought to your villa on the same day. Note that some of the products stated on the list might be unavailable on times in Zanzibar or be seasonal and therefore non-existent.

You can download the shopping list here and send it to us before your arrival. The products will wait for you.

Grocery shopping on Zanzibar can be done at the stalls or small shops owned by the local community. Here you can find only primary products. A wider variety of goods can be found in a few shops located in Stone Town.

There is a small shop situated 200m from our hotel. It is called Baghdadi Store and you can find it on the main village road which connects our properties.

Tourist visas for Zanzibar are available at the airport upon arrival at the immigration desk. The tourist visa costs 50$ and entitles you to stay in Tanzania and Zanzibar up to 90 days. It may occur that airport functionary will demand payment with a credit card, rather than cash, therefore it is recommended to have both at the time.

Be aware that the waiting time is around 45 minutes. You can save some of that time by printing and completing the following form (Visa application forms) prior to your arrival.

We offer our guests transfers from and to the airport or ferry (55 km) with the new Toyota Alphard. The cost is 50$ per car (up to 6 people) one way and 95$ return.

There is no government-owned public transportation in Zanzibar. Privately owned, so-called ”DalaDala”, functions as a collective taxi that serves as the only kind of public transport. It is definitely the cheapest and most adventurous conveyance on the island.

The term DalaDala evolved from the Kiswahili word “Dala” — a colloquial reference to the US dollar that approximated the cost in shillings during the 1970s and 80s.

If you plan to rent a car or a motorbike, remember to always have your driving license and Zanzibar Driving Permit, which you can buy at the car rental company (25$). Police checks occur on a daily basis, where the documents as car insurance and issue date of servicing are being checked.

Please note that on Zanzibar left-hand side traffic applies.

We recommend: ZanCars

It is a common way to use a taxi as a mean of transportation between points A and B. In Zanzibar, you pay for a route rather than a kilometre, and we set the price prior to your departure. Be aware that you need to order a taxi at least 20 min before your desired time of departure for shorter distances and an hour for the longer ones.

Taxis, which we use for our guests are of the highest quality. Cars and drivers are insured. In the event of any failure, a spare car is always available near Paje and Stone Town.

For recommended vaccinations and other medical advice, we suggest to talk to your doctor well in advance before your travel.

Medical provisions on the island are not comparable to Western countries, but there are doctors and hospitals all over the island. You can avoid unwelcome incidents by following some simple rules:

• Do not drink water from the tap.
• Ask if ice cubes are made from bottled water.
• Wash your fruits and vegetables with bottled water before eating.

For recommended vaccinations and other medical advice, we suggest to talk to your doctor well in advance before your travel.

Unlike the mainland of Tanzania, a chance for being infected by malaria, while in Zanzibar is low – 0,02%. However, we recommend to use products preventing you from mosquito bites and closing insect nets installed in the villas.

The area of high malaria risk on Mainland is situated by the Lake Victoria.

The local currency is the Tanzanian Shilling that is valid on Zanzibar, Pemba and the Tanzanian mainland.

We recommend exchanging your home currency to US dollars before departure to avoid bank charges. However, many places accept USD, Euro, Pound Sterling. Please note that the US dollar shouldn’t be older than 2006, because of the poorer exchange rate. At most bureau de change, larger notes fetch a better exchange rate than the smaller notes.

At Jambiani Villas we do not charge any fees on credit card payments. Keep in mind, however, that a 5% fee is practiced in many places on Zanzibar.

The best rates to exchange money is in the exchange office at the airport parking. (NOTE! Not one inside the airport!).

You can also exchange money in Paje or Jambiani, but remember that you will receive a less convenient rate:

• Jambiani: Baghdadi Store (around 300m from Jambiani Villas)
• Paje: Wakala, Supermarket

Apart from many bureaux de change in Stone Town, it is also possible to exchange money in Jambiani Villas on a fixed monthly rate.

Please kindly be advised to check with your bank before arrival regarding maximum amounts for withdrawals, and a maximum number of transactions allowed within a day.

Also, note that some banks have to activate your debit or credit cards for foreign countries before embarking on a holiday. Each withdrawal from an ATM, Tanzania Bank charges with $4-7 commission. The nearest ATM is located in Paje and the maximum amount per swipe is 400 000 TSH (+/- $170).

They are two ATM in Paje:

• Barclay’s
• Umoja. Please note that Umoja ATM accepts local cards, rather than international.

If you wish to obtain a local SIM card you need to present your passport before the purchase. For mobile internet, we recommend Zantel due to its growing network of the 4G/LTE, whereas for call purposes Halotel.

In 2008, Zanzibar got connected to the Internet. Across the island, you can mostly use the 3G network, in some exceptions 4G. However, please remember that the speed and the quality of access will not be the same as you know it. We call its speed “pole pole”, what is Swahili means “slowly slowly”.

For the convenience of tourists, several hotspots have been set around the city of Stone Town. You can find them at the airport, ferry terminal, Forodhani Gardens, Mercury’s Restaurant and La Taverna restaurant.

Most hotels and restaurants across the island also offer free Wi-Fi access for their guests.

Low and high tides are very well noticeable at the east coast of Zanzibar. At the low tide, the ocean retreats far from the shoreline. At that time the ocean’s bottom reveals, what makes it possible to up to 1,5 km far from the beach. The high tide, dependable on the incoming amount of water, you may not be able to walk on the beach for few hours, what more, large waves easily splash right onto the fencing of resort premises. It is advised you orientate yourself about tides flow, by asking staff or via the internet.

Plastic Bag Ban with effect from 1st June 2019: – tourists, can face very heavy fines for using Plastic bags. Using, manufacture or importation of plastic bags, including garbage bags and shopping bags, is illegal. Convicted offenders, including tourists, can face very heavy fines, imprisonment for up to two years, or both.

Visitors are advised to avoid packing any plastic bags in their suitcases or in carry-on hand luggage before flying to Tanzania. Items purchased at the airport before boarding the aircraft should be removed from plastic bags. Please check hand luggage before disembarking at entry points and any plastic bags should be left in the plane. Similarly, the transparent “zip-lock” plastic bags that some airlines require passengers to use for keeping liquids, cosmetics, toiletries, etc. separately in hand luggage are also not permitted to be brought and should be removed and left on the plane before disembarking.

Full official information: here

We understand that some of our guests may wish to change their existing travel plans in light of coronavirus. We have amended our commercial policy in order to provide maximum flexibility and peace of mind to our guests.

All guests with bookings up to 30 May 2020 can now change their travel plans free of charge by altering their booking dates (rate differences may apply) or opting to receive a travel voucher up to seven days prior to arrival.

The travel voucher can be used for a future stay, in all of our properties, valid for one year from the date of issue. Cancellation penalties will be waived for guests who opt to receive a travel voucher for a future stay.