Colette's Grand Detour

Day 16 (12th August 2025)

On our way back to Stone Town from the spice farm, we had to take a diversion through the heart of a local community, due to traffic from a big football match being played that day. Lots of vehicles were taking this detour, but you could tell this wasn’t a day-to-day occurrence from the reaction of the locals sitting outside their houses as we passed by. I was secretly glad we got diverted as we got to see what a real local community looks like in the Stone Town area. Not everyone is living in beautiful old white-washed palaces in the winding streets of Stone Town. So it was good to get a view into the local’s world. The striped rusting roofs that I had seen as we flew into the airport were great to see close up and give the town a lot of character.

We did a walking tour of Stone Town after lunch but I’m not going to go into detail on that today as I plan to have a longer private walking tour tomorrow and I’m sure I will have lots more to share. Today’s walking tour ended in Forodhani Gardens, located right by the sea and is where we hopped on our boat heading to Prison Island.

There are a number of small islands you can see from Stone Town Harbor, some housing luxury hotels and others like Prison Island spots on the typical tourist circuit of the town. After 20 minutes, passing by small traditional dhows and much larger container ships we pulled up on a spit of beach at the entrance to the island.

Officially known as Changuu Island (meaning giant fish in Swahili), this dot in the ocean plays an important role in the history of Stone Town. Until the late 19th century it was used as a holding point for enslaved people heading to Zanzibar’s infamous slave market. After that it was briefly owned by the British, who built a prison that was ultimately never used because there was a more urgent need to set up a quarantine station to fight the spread of yellow fever in the late 1890s.

A more recent role for the island has been to be a sanctuary for Giant Aldabra tortoises. In 1919 the British Governor of the Seychelles gifted Zanzibar 4 tortoises and the population has now exploded to over 100. Some of them are enormous and over 150 years old! It was great to get really close up to these slow moving giants. However, the local guides and their tourists were all touching the animals, regardless of the big signs saying not to touch. I decided to say something to one particular group who were being very inappropriate, even touching their faces, which is wrong for so many different reasons. I then decided to leave and wait for the rest of my group outside as I did not like how the place was run.

As I left I made it clear to the owner that he was not running a good business and not looking after his animals properly. He rushed off to tell the offending tourists to stop what they were doing, but I’m sure my small complaint will have done very little in the long run. So I will say here, that I would recommend boycotting the tortoise sanctuary if you do ever visit the island.

My honest review of the island is that it has a nice small museum within the old British prison with some very good photos of the old ivory trade, but not much else. I don’t feel like this is an absolute must do in Zanzibar. If you are short on time, pick to do a longer walking tour in Stone Town and a visit to a spice farm.