Welcome to little Zanzibar: how Pemba became one of the world's great dive spots

Pemba, off the coast of Tanzania, is laid-back and traditional — and one of the world’s great dive spots, says Graeme Green 
Island life: market day in the town of Wete on the west coast of Pemba, part of the Zanzibar archipelago in the Indian Ocean
Alamy Stock Photo
Graeme Green14 January 2019

The tail disappeared into the blue. Its owner had only been with us a few moments before gracefully gliding away but it was unmistakable: a manta ray. Dive instructors Glenn Campbell and Alla Druzhynina performed a delighted little “victory” dance under the water.

Later, back on the dive boat, the celebrations continued. “Wow, a manta. A manta hasn’t been seen under the water here for four years,” Campbell explained. “People thought they’d all disappeared. To see mantas returning is so exciting for Pemba.”

It’s an exciting time overall for Pemba, a tiny island off the coast of Tanzania. There’s the arrival of a luxurious hotel (one of just a handful on the island), Pemba Marine Reserve’s pristine dive sites are starting to earn an international reputation and the island itself is emerging as a less developed, more laid-back alternative to Zanzibar. Indeed, Pemba had been described to me as “like Zanzibar 30 years ago”. It was easy to see why as our little plane from Dar Es Salaam came in to land. Whereas Zanzibar’s coast is busy with resorts and the heavily populated area near the airport is a sea of shining metal roofs, Pemba’s is emptier, still deserving of its “Green Island” nickname.

We saw a glimpse of island life as we drove south from the airport, passing villages where children in blue-and-white uniforms rode bikes or walked home from school, the girls on this mostly Muslim island wearing white headdresses. The fertile land on each side of the road was being used to produce mango, papaya and the spices these islands are renowned for: cloves, vanilla, ginger, black pepper…

From Nkoani port we took a speedboat out to Fundu Lagoon, a secluded beach hangout on the south-west coast. Wooden buildings with thatched roofs faced out onto the ocean, decorated inside with African masks, shields and drums. In the mornings we watched from our spacious safari-style tent as local women in colourful robes walked along the beach to collect shellfish, while monkeys played on the sand.

In the morning, I boarded a yellow speedboat for Misali Island, across from Fundu. “The coral here is so pristine, so healthy, and there’s a lot of fish,” Medi Hamis, instructor with Dive 710 (Fundu’s in-house dive centre) told me. “Zanzibar and other places are not so pristine, and the dive sites there can have a lot of other dive boats. Here, it’s just us.”

Diving in the reefs off Pemba
Alamy Stock Photo

We geared up, rolled backwards from the boat and descended to explore “Coral Mountain”. Large tuna and jacks swam together in squads. A behemoth Napoleon wrasse hovered. Medi picked out a stingray, camouflaged in the sand. Thousands of tiny silver and gold fish glistened as we swam over fan and brain coral.

Later, at the Wowowo dive site, we saw shoals of masked bannerfish, a torpedo ray resting on corals and a massive potato grouper. “Wow, did you see how busy it was down there?” Medi asked, excitedly, as we hit the surface.

The next day we drove north, past Chake-Chake, the island’s capital, and up through the island’s sweet potato and cassava farms and rice fields. At Mtambwe we stopped at 1001 Organic Zanj Spice, where Mwubwa Shaib led us proudly around his plantation, picking cinnamon, vanilla (“king of the spices”), lemongrass, turmeric, cloves (the “black gold of Zanzibar”) and more for us to inspect, smell and taste.

Spices and trade are central to the history of these islands. Zanzibar was previously a Portuguese colony, then a Sultanate of Oman and, later, a British Protectorate, before gaining independence in 1963. Mwubwa is adamant that Pemba’s spices are better than its sister island. “The soil on Pemba is so good. If you plant something it grows very fast. The food is even nicer than Zanzibar’s.”

We reached newly opened Constance Aiyana on Pemba’s northern tip. Naraindra Ashok Sungkar, the landscape gardener who designed the hotel, clearly has both a sense of style and a playful artistic side. The buildings are brilliant white, with arches, sculpted columns and Sangkar’s modern art pieces, from red roosters to chubby round faces, positioned around the pool and gardens, all set among palm trees, bougainvillea and frangipani. Rooms are all-white too, with an energetic “scraped paint” effect on the woodwork. Best of all, we looked directly out onto the Indian Ocean.

Tropical taste: fishing boats moor off the beach
Getty Images/AWL Images RM

We ate sashimi and grilled dorado on the beach and took a sunset cruise on a wind-powered ngadali (wooden boat), before setting off down the north-west coast next morning with Alla and Glenn from Swahili Divers. “There’s incredible diversity around Pemba,” Alla told me as we travelled towards “The Aquarium” dive site. “Visibility is superb, and in 100 dives, we’ve never seen another diver under the water.”

Pemba’s rising status is “a double-edged sword”, Campbell said, with plans for the island’s runway to be expanded. “We want more people to come, but we also want to preserve this. We want Pemba to be known for ‘prestige diving’. There are one or two new hotels on the way with dive centres. But we don’t want mass-market fly-by-nighters. We don’t want dives with 50-100 other divers.”

The Aquarium’s rock formations and vivid corals teemed with life. Garden eels stuck out of the sand like antennae. Pufferfish danced around us. At times we were surrounded by more fish species than I could count, from trombone fish to bannerfish.

Then, muffled yells. Even under the water I could make out Glenn’s words: “Manta, manta”. It saw us, paused, not used to seeing humans, then gently flapped away.

Rudy’s Wall, our next dive site, inside the Ngao Channel, had a different, sometimes eerie feel, with big straight ledges, caves and overhangs, like exploring a lost city. But when sunlight pierced through, the fan and vase corals lit up. We found catfish hovering in a nook, three types of nudi-branches and clownfish guarding eggs among anemone tentacles.

It was just a taste of more than 20 dive sites around Pemba. “We’re still finding sites. We’re seeing new stuff here all the time,” Campbell told me, excited by the possibilities. “There’s so much more here to explore.”

Details: Pemba

Audley Travel (audleytravel.com/tanzania) has a 13-night trip including two nights at Constance Aiyana and two at Fundu Lagoon on Pemba and seven nights on Tanzania’s other islands from £5,400pp, including international and domestic flights and transfers.

Swahili Divers (swahilidivers.com) has two morning dives, snacks, hot drinks, boat pick-up and drop-off for £133pp, plus £43 for gear rental.

Dive 710 (fundulagoon.com) has two morning dives around Misali for £128, plus £30 for gear hire and park fee.

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