Destination guide · Coast & islands
Pemba Island
4.7· 440 traveller reviews
Why come
What Pemba Island is known for
Wall diving
Steep drop-offs and visibility that Zanzibar's main island cannot offer.
Almost no tourism
Pemba is greener, hillier and emptier — the reason to come is that nobody else has.
Clove forests
The island grows most of the archipelago's cloves, and you can smell it.
Zanzibar's greener, hillier and far quieter sister, an hour north by air. Clove plantations, mangrove channels and some of East Africa's best wall diving on reefs that see a fraction of the traffic. There is almost no mass tourism here, which is the entire point.
Best time: November to March underwater. How long: four nights minimum — it is not somewhere to pass through.
Shape a journey around Pemba Island
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