Dar es Salaam

Taxi or Bolt. Yellow-and-white taxis line up outside the cruise gate on Bandari Road; agree the fare in TZS before getting in. Cruise gate to downtown (Sokoine Drive, the National Museum, Kariakoo) is TZS 15 000–25 000 (USD 6–10) one way. Bolt — the local Uber-equivalent — works well in Dar es Salaam and gives you a metered price; the catch is you need a working SIM or hotel Wi-Fi at the gate to summon a car. Ship shuttle buses, when run, drop at a downtown hotel and cost USD 15–20 round trip. There is no walking option that is realistic on a port day; the gate is 4 km from downtown via a single bridge-and-loop road and traffic is bad on weekday mornings.

Yes, with the standard big-market discipline. Kariakoo is the central wholesale-and-retail market of Dar es Salaam, a dense grid of streets between Msimbazi and Lumumba in the Kariakoo neighbourhood, about 3 km west of the downtown peninsula. It is loud, hot, crowded, and absolutely not curated for tourists — fabric kanga and kitenge, hardware, spice, hot pepper, dried fish, second-hand clothes. Go in the morning before the heat peaks. Keep your phone in a front pocket; pickpockets work the densest stretches. A taxi from the cruise gate is TZS 20 000–30 000 (USD 8–12) one way; Bolt is cheaper. Bargain hard — first price is roughly double.

Different things. The National Museum and House of Culture on Shaaban Robert Street downtown holds the Olduvai Gorge fossil casts (the originals are in Arusha), a colonial-history wing covering the German East Africa and British Tanganyika periods, and ethnographic galleries — air-conditioned, about ninety minutes for a good visit, entry TZS 6 500 (USD 2.50) for foreigners. The Village Museum (Makumbusho ya Kijiji) on Bagamoyo Road, 9 km north of downtown, is an open-air park with reconstructed traditional houses from sixteen Tanzanian ethnic groups and live ngoma drumming on Saturdays and Sundays — outdoor, hot, more interesting if you want context for the rest of the country. Entry TZS 6 500 (USD 2.50). On a single port day, pick the National Museum if it's a weekday and the Village Museum if it's a weekend.

Yes, and it is the best non-Zanzibar use of a Dar es Salaam port day. Both islands sit just off the Msasani peninsula in the Dar es Salaam Marine Reserve. Bongoyo is the closer one — thirty minutes by public boat from the Slipway shopping centre dock, departures roughly every two hours from 09:30. Round-trip boat is TZS 30 000 (USD 12); marine-reserve entry is USD 10 cash. The island is uninhabited apart from a beach grill: white sand, reef snorkel off the south point (bring your own gear; rental is limited), no shade past the cluster of bandas. Mbudya is further north, reached from Kunduchi Beach Hotel; similar setup, fewer day visitors. Allow five to six hours total including the taxi to and from the Slipway.

Doable but tight, and only if your ship has a 10+ hour call. The Azam Marine fast ferry from the Sokoine Drive terminal in downtown Dar es Salaam runs to Stone Town in about two hours each way; departures are typically 07:00, 09:30, 12:30, and 16:00, but check the day-of schedule because rough seas reshuffle them. Round-trip foreigner fare is USD 70 (royal class) or USD 50 (business). That leaves you maybe four hours in Stone Town — enough for the old town, the slave-market memorial, and a quick lunch, but no beach. Most cruise itineraries that include Zanzibar dock there directly the next day, which is the better way to see it. If your ship skips Zanzibar entirely, the ferry day-trip is the contingency.

Tanzanian shilling (TZS) is the official currency, and roughly TZS 2 500 = USD 1 at the time of writing. USD is widely accepted at tourist sites — the museums, the marine-reserve fee, ship-recommended craft shops, hotel restaurants, and the Azam ferry counter — usually at a slightly worse-than-bank rate. Cash is king for the markets, street taxis, the Slipway boat to Bongoyo, and small restaurants. Cards work at chain hotels (Hyatt, Serena, Southern Sun) and the bigger downtown restaurants, less reliably elsewhere. ATMs at CRDB, NMB, and Standard Chartered downtown dispense TZS against Visa and Mastercard; the airport ATMs at Julius Nyerere International are reliable on arrival. USD notes must be 2013-or-newer and unmarked or vendors will refuse them.