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THE 2 MOST BUCKET LIST THINGS TO DO IN ZANZIBAR. Ultimate African Adventures!

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A family of five trades scuba tanks for wild dolphin pods and a beach full of hatching sea turtles off the coast of Zanzibar.

The Bucket List Family — Garrett and Jessica Gee, along with their three kids Dorothy, Manilla, and Calihan — spent a week at &Beyond Mnemba Island, a private atoll retreat off Zanzibar’s coast, and came away with two experiences the parents call the most bucket-list-worthy of their entire around-the-world trip. Rather than touring Stone Town or the spice farms most visitors associate with Tanzania, the family’s video stays almost entirely on the water and the sand surrounding Mnemba, chasing two very specific wildlife encounters. It’s a narrower, more focused episode than their usual travel vlogs, and that focus is the point.

• The family free-dove and snorkeled alongside wild bottlenose dolphin pods in open water off Mnemba Island rather than in a controlled tank or lagoon setting.
• They watched newly hatched green sea turtles emerge from their nests on Mnemba’s protected beach and crawl across the sand into the Indian Ocean, a moment tied to the island’s marine conservation program.
• The weeklong stay also included scuba diving lessons, reef exploration around the coral atoll, and shell collecting along the beach.

Swimming With Wild Dolphins Off Mnemba

The first bucket-list item takes the Gees offshore by boat to track pods of bottlenose dolphins moving through the clear water surrounding the atoll. Unlike swim-with-dolphins tourist setups elsewhere in the world, there’s no pen and no trained animal — the family free-dives into open water to get alongside wild pods, timing their entry to wherever the dolphins surface next. The footage shows the kids, including the youngest, in the water as the pod moves past, a sequence Garrett frames as the kind of encounter that can’t be scheduled or guaranteed.

That unpredictability is part of what makes it a bucket-list entry rather than a standard excursion. Mnemba’s location on a coral atoll puts boats close to deep channel water where dolphin pods regularly pass, giving visitors staying at the island a real shot at the encounter without a long open-ocean crossing.

Baby Sea Turtles Making Their Run to the Ocean

The second experience shifts from the water to the sand: newly hatched green sea turtles breaking out of their nests on Mnemba’s beach and scrambling toward the surf. The island runs a marine conservation effort tied to these nesting sites, and the family’s video captures the hatchlings’ crawl to the shoreline as it happens, dozens of small turtles moving across the sand at once toward the water.

Two things you have to see with your own eyes — wild dolphins and baby turtles hitting the ocean for the first time.

The moment is brief but concentrated — hatchlings only have a short window between emerging from the nest and reaching the water, and the conservation program on the island exists specifically to protect that stretch of beach so the process can happen undisturbed.

The Rest of the Mnemba Stay

Beyond the two headline encounters, the family’s week at &Beyond Mnemba Island included scuba diving lessons and reef exploration around the surrounding coral atoll, plus simpler downtime like shell collecting along the beach. The atoll’s reef system gives divers and snorkelers access to the same waters the dolphins pass through, tying the diving and the wildlife encounters together as part of one ecosystem rather than separate activities.

For families weighing an East Africa itinerary that leans on wildlife and water rather than mainland sightseeing, the Gees’ approach mirrors what other family travel vloggers have found worthwhile on the continent — a similar wildlife-first mindset shows up in the South Africa family vacation vlog from Travel With Kids, and readers weighing island stays generally can browse more entries in InfoSearched’s beaches coverage.

The Gees don’t rank the two experiences against each other in the video — dolphins in open water and turtles hitting the surf both get equal billing as the trip’s standout moments. What’s clear is that neither required a dive certification or a guided tour package beyond the stay itself; both came down to timing, a boat, and a stretch of protected beach doing exactly what it was set up to do.