Diving in Zanzibar isn't restricted to beginners. Experienced scuba divers can enjoy exciting wall dives, night dives and drift dives. In deeper waters, lush coral gardens often stretch as far as the eye can see, and large gamefish (barracuda, kingfish, tuna and wahoo) hunt together with large Napoleonic wrasse, graceful manta rays and sharks. Shallower waters are the playgrounds of tropical fish, including a huge variety of Indo-Pacific marine fauna.

Shopping in Zanzibar
Whether you're in the market for T-shirts, spices, kangas, furniture or hand sewn pillow covers, Zanzibar is one of the last places left for fun shopping and bargain hunts. You will find the inevitable ashtray carved out of a coconut shell, but there are enough Tinga-tinga paintings, woodcarvings and woven goods to keep almost everyone in the market for a tasteful souvenir.

Look for stamps, coins, currency bills, furniture, ceramic bowls, wooden frames, metal signboards advertising Simba Chai (Lion Tea), antique wall clocks and copper and brass bowls, pans and tea kettles. Coconut massage oil with lemongrass, bitter orange soap and other locally-made products are affordable and unavailable at home so consider stocking up. Spice baskets are available all over town, they travel well, make easy souvenirs for friends and they'll clear customs in no time.

Gizenga Street, off Kenyatta Road by the Post Office is an excellent street for finding all the things mentioned above plus postcards, stamps, skin-covered drums, spices, and antiques. Sasik, a store representing a women's cooperative, is highly recommended for locally sewn pillow covers in traditional Arabic and Persian patterns. Some of the fabrics are even dyed on the island from local plant dyes.

Throughout town there are several shops (called dukas) that sell everything from groceries to fuel. There are also some antique stores that have some interesting pieces that may bear historical importance and almost all of them sell the ceramic bowls leftover from the colonial era (50 to 60 years old).
The Spice Tour
Finding nutmeg sitting on the forest floor or peeling the bark off of a cinnamon tree are some of the fun things to do on Spice tour. Visitors go from plantation to plantation and from plant to plant trying to find the spice within.

Nutmeg grows on a tree and is sort of the pit of a fruit that looks somewhat like an apple. The nutmeg trees are huge and the under-forest is dark. Vanilla is a vine that grows on large trees and cardamom seeds grow at the base of large, ginger-cousin light green plant that has shoots or runners from which the seeds are picked. Cinnamon leaves are good for chewing and pepper is hot, green and fresh tasting before it is dried and ground to become black pepper.
All along the tour there are kiosks where tourists can buy packaged spices including the following: turmeric, tandoori, vanilla beans and extract, masala, hot chilies, black pepper (ground or whole), cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon sticks or powder, saffron (not locally grown but affordable), ginger, and others.

Architectural Tour of Stone Town
Discover the origins of architectural trends in Stone Town. Explore subtleties in building structure that the untrained eye just may not catch. See how they built drainpipes into the walls of local homes only to come out again at the bottom of the wall to drain. They do this because the streets were so narrow, they put the pipes into the walls so no one would hit his head or catch his cart on the pipes as he walked by. Old lattice work balconies, decrepit buildings, light fixtures and more than a handful of carved doors, each with its own story. This tour is highly recommended.