Pemba & Mafia Islands
About Pemba & Mafia Islands
Pemba and Mafia are the Zanzibar archipelago's other islands, and they are what Zanzibar was thirty years ago: few visitors, few hotels, reefs in genuinely good condition, and almost nothing built for tourism.
They are not alternatives to each other. Pemba lies north of Unguja, hilly and thickly farmed — the Arabs called it the Green Island — and it produces the large majority of the archipelago's cloves, which is the crop Zanzibar's whole reputation was built on. Mafia lies well to the south, off the Rufiji delta, flatter and quieter still, and its life is organised around a single large sheltered bay.
Pemba's draw is underwater and it is specific. The channel between the island and the mainland drops to around eight hundred metres, and that depth pushes nutrient-rich water up against steep coral walls. The result is wall diving of a standard that puts Pemba on serious divers' lists worldwide — drop-offs falling away into blue, coral in excellent condition, reef sharks, barracuda and turtle, with visibility frequently past thirty metres. Currents can be strong and many of the best sites are drift dives, so this is where experienced divers go while Zanzibar handles the training. Inland, the Ngezi Forest Reserve holds the Pemba flying fox and three bird species found on this island and nowhere else on earth.
Mafia's draw is different. Its marine park was the first declared in Tanzania and remains one of the better-managed in the region, covering reef flat, coral garden, seagrass and mangrove close enough together to snorkel in a single day. Green turtles nest on the beaches under a long-running community programme. And from roughly October to March, whale sharks gather in the shallow water off Kilindoni to feed on plankton coming out of the Rufiji — a portion of the population appears to be resident rather than transient, which gives Mafia one of the highest encounter rates of any whale shark site in the world.
Both islands reward a traveller who wants the coast without the resorts. Neither has much in the way of nightlife, roads or shopping, and that is the point. Access is by light aircraft — Mafia from Dar es Salaam or Zanzibar, Pemba from Zanzibar or Tanga — and both pair naturally with a southern-circuit safari at Nyerere or Ruaha rather than with the northern parks.
What to see here
12 places inside Pemba & Mafia Islands worth planning around.
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The Pemba Channel #
The channel between Pemba and the mainland drops to around eight hundred metres, and that depth is what makes the diving here what it is. Deep water pushes up against steep coral walls, bringing nutrients and the big pelagic species that follow them.
The result is wall diving of a standard that puts Pemba on serious divers' lists worldwide: drop-offs that fall away into blue, hard and soft coral in excellent condition, and reliable encounters with reef sharks, barracuda, tuna, kingfish and turtle. Visibility is frequently over thirty metres.
It is not a beginner's destination. Currents can be strong and many of the best sites are drift dives on walls, so this is where experienced divers go while Zanzibar handles the training. The trade-off is exclusivity — a fraction of Zanzibar's visitor numbers, and reefs that show it.
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Mafia Island Marine Park #
The first marine protected area declared in Tanzania, covering the southern part of Mafia and the reef systems around it, and one of the better-managed marine parks in the region.
Inside it are over four hundred fish species and a substantial share of East Africa's coral diversity, in a mix of habitats — reef flat, coral garden, seagrass bed, mangrove and deeper channel — that sit close enough together to be dived or snorkelled in the same day. Green turtles nest on the beaches and are protected through a long-running community programme.
The park is a working seascape rather than a wilderness: fishing villages operate inside it under managed rules, and the arrangement between conservation and livelihood is visible everywhere. Fees go to the park, and the condition of the reef compared with unprotected areas nearby is the argument for them.
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Whale Sharks at Kilindoni #
From roughly October to March, whale sharks gather in the shallow water off Kilindoni on Mafia's western side to feed on plankton blooms coming out of the Rufiji delta. They are the largest fish in the sea, they are entirely harmless, and here they can be swum with.
What makes Mafia unusual is that a portion of the population appears to be resident rather than transient, so the encounter rate through the season is high compared with most whale shark sites worldwide. You go out in a small boat, the spotter finds a shark feeding at the surface, and you slip in ahead of it and swim alongside.
Codes of conduct matter here — no touching, no blocking the animal's path, limited swimmers in the water — and the operators who follow them properly are worth choosing deliberately.
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Misali Island #
A small uninhabited island in the Pemba Channel, surrounded by a reef in exceptional condition and protected as part of a community conservation area that local fishermen helped to design.
The snorkelling starts a few metres off the beach — over three hundred fish species and around forty genera of coral recorded around an island you can walk around in an hour. Turtles nest on the western beach, and the interior holds the Pemba flying fox, an enormous fruit bat found nowhere else on earth.
The island has an unusually good story attached: it is sacred in local tradition, associated with a saint's prayer mat, and that religious protection was the foundation the modern conservation agreement was built on. Day boats run from the west coast of Pemba, and the island stays quiet even in high season.
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Ngezi Forest Reserve #
In the north-west of Pemba, a remnant of the indigenous forest that once covered the island — dense, humid, and unlike anything on Zanzibar, holding species that evolved in isolation after Pemba separated from the mainland.
The reserve is the stronghold of the Pemba flying fox, and a colony can be watched leaving to feed at dusk, thousands of large bats coming off the roost trees. The Pemba scops owl, the Pemba green pigeon and the Pemba white-eye are all found only on this island and all occur here, which brings birders a long way for a short list.
Trails run through the forest with a guide from the reserve office, and the walk takes an hour or two. It is the counterweight to a diving trip: the island's interior is clove plantation, forest and farmland, and almost no visitor who comes for the reefs ever sees it.
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Chole Bay #
A large, sheltered bay on Mafia's eastern side, enclosed by reef and islands, and the centre of everything that happens on the island. The water is protected in almost any weather, which makes it exceptional for diving, snorkelling, kayaking and sailing alike.
The bay holds a set of dive sites within a few minutes of each other — coral gardens in shallow water for snorkellers, and passes and walls near the mouth for divers, where tidal flow through Kinasi Pass brings in bigger fish. Most of Mafia's lodges sit on or near the bay for exactly this reason.
Dhows still work the bay under sail, which is not staged for anyone. Sitting on the shore in the evening watching working boats come in on the tide is much of what a Mafia holiday consists of, and why people who come here tend to come back.
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Juani Island and the Kua Ruins #
Across Chole Bay on Juani Island stand the ruins of Kua, a Swahili town of the thirteenth to eighteenth centuries — mosques, houses and tombs in coral rag, now half swallowed by forest with roots levering the walls apart.
It was a significant settlement on the Indian Ocean trade network, connected to Kilwa down the coast, and it was destroyed in the early nineteenth century. Almost nobody visits, so there are no railings, no ticket office and no crowd: you walk through a lost town with a local guide, in silence, with baobabs growing out of the buildings.
The island also has tidal pools and a blue lagoon reachable at the right state of the tide. Combined with a dhow crossing from Chole, it makes the best non-diving day on Mafia, and it puts the region's history in a frame that a beach holiday otherwise leaves out.
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Pemba's Clove Plantations #
Pemba, not Zanzibar, is where most of the cloves actually come from. The island produces the large majority of the archipelago's crop, and the interior is a continuous landscape of clove trees, mango, breadfruit and banana — green, hilly and thickly farmed, which is why Arabs called it the Green Island.
The harvest runs in two main seasons, and during them the roads and village squares are spread with drying cloves and the smell is genuinely everywhere. Buds are picked by hand from ladders in the trees, dried in the sun for days, and sorted before sale, mostly on smallholdings rather than estates.
Visiting is informal compared with Zanzibar's organised spice tours — you go with a local guide to farms where the work is happening. For anyone who has done the Zanzibar version, this is the unpackaged original, and it explains the island's economy far better than any tour does.
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Ras Mkumbuu Ruins #
On a long thin peninsula reaching west from Chake Chake stand the ruins of one of the oldest towns on the East African coast. Ras Mkumbuu was a working Swahili port from around the tenth century, and what survives is a Friday mosque, a scatter of pillar tombs and the coral-rag walls of substantial houses, standing in scrub above the water.
It is thought to be the settlement the Arab geographers described as a town of the Zanj, trading up and down the coast to the Gulf, and the scale of the mosque says it was wealthy. It was abandoned by the sixteenth century and the bush has had it since. There is no visitor centre, no crowd and very little signage.
The way to arrive is by boat from Chake Chake, an hour up the creek and around the point through mangrove channels, which is how everyone came when the town was alive. Combined with an afternoon on Misali it makes the best day out on Pemba that does not involve a tank.
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Vumawimbi and Ras Kigomasha #
The Kigomasha peninsula at Pemba's northern tip holds the emptiest good beach in the archipelago. Vumawimbi is a long crescent of white sand backed by the forest of Ngezi, with no development on it at all, and on most days no one on it either.
At the point itself stands the Ras Kigomasha lighthouse, built in 1904 in the German period and still working, still hand-wound by the keeper who lives beside it. He will let you up the ladder for a small tip, and the view from the gallery takes in the reef, the channel and the whole northern end of the island.
The peninsula is also where the diving boats go for the northern walls and where turtles come ashore on the quieter beaches. Getting up here from Chake Chake takes a couple of hours on rough road through the clove country, which is the only reason a beach this good is still empty.
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Turtle Nesting on Mafia #
Green turtles nest on the beaches of Juani and the smaller islands around Chole Bay, and Mafia runs one of the longest-standing community turtle programmes in Tanzania. Nests are found by local monitors, recorded, and where they are threatened by tides or dogs they are moved and guarded until they hatch.
Nesting happens through much of the year with a peak around the middle of it, and hatchlings emerge roughly two months after a clutch is laid, usually at night. Visitors who happen to be there when a nest is due can go with the monitors to watch it hatch, which is not something that can be booked in advance because turtles do not work that way. The programme pays the monitors from visitor fees, which is what has made it stick.
The same waters hold hawksbill and green turtle year round, and the snorkelling in Chole Bay produces them regularly. The rule with any of it is distance: no touching, no torches on the beach during nesting, and no swimming after an animal that is trying to leave.
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Two Islands, One Trip #
Pemba and Mafia are grouped together here for what they have in common, but they are three hundred kilometres apart with Unguja between them, and combining them takes planning.
There is no useful direct connection. Both are served by light aircraft: Mafia from Dar es Salaam in about thirty minutes and from Zanzibar in a little more, Pemba from Zanzibar in around twenty-five minutes or from Dar and Tanga. Doing both means routing through Zanzibar or Dar in the middle, so it works as one leg of a longer trip rather than a beach week. Ferries run to Pemba from Zanzibar and Tanga and are cheap, slow and weather-dependent.
The honest advice is to choose one unless you have two weeks. Take Mafia for whale sharks between October and March, easy diving in a sheltered bay and Swahili ruins on an island nobody visits. Take Pemba for serious wall diving, hills, cloves and the emptiest coastline in the archipelago. Both pair naturally with a safari that ends in Dar rather than with an Unguja beach stay.
