Where
50 km north east of Unguja, part of Zanzibar
Flight from ZNZ
25 to 35 min, $70 to $120 one way
Tours on the island
$95 to $150 a person, most a full day
Diving
$90 to $120 a dive, Advanced card advised
Best months
October to March
Minimum stay
Three nights, five if you dive
Pemba Island at a glance: cost and time
Twelve things worth doing on Pemba, ranked. Prices are per adult. The ones that can be booked online have a card further down, the rest go through your lodge.
| What | Cost | Time |
|---|---|---|
| Dive the walls of the Pemba Channel | $90 to $120 a dive, plus a daily park fee | Two dives, a morning |
| Snorkel and picnic on Misali Island | From $120 on a tour, lunch included | Most of a day |
| Snorkel off Njau Island | From $135, lunch and drinks included | Most of a day |
| Walk the sandbank at Fundu Lagoon | From $150 | A full day, tide dependent |
| Vumawimbi beach and the Ras Kigomasha lighthouse | From $99 with a spice farm, or free from a northern lodge | A full day on a tour |
| Walk through Ngezi forest | From $119 with lunch and transfers | Two hours on foot, a day with the drive |
| Watch the flying foxes at Kidike | A small entry fee, paid on site | An hour, late afternoon |
| Spend a morning in clove country | From $95 with Chake Chake | Five to seven hours |
| Tumbe fish market and Kojani Island | From $104 | Five hours |
| The ruins nobody visits | A boat from Chake Chake, priced on the day | Half a day |
| Take a sunset dhow from Wete | From $110, drinks included | Two hours |
| Sleep in the Manta Resort's underwater room | Around $1,500 a night for two | One night |
The best things to do on Pemba
The tours below are run by small Pemba operators and most are new listings with few or no reviews yet. Your lodge often runs the same trip: ask for its price before you book.
1.Dive the walls of the Pemba Channel
$90 to $120 a dive, plus a daily park fee · Two dives, a morning
The reason most visitors come. The channel drops to several hundred metres a short way offshore and the west coast reefs fall into it as walls, covered in hard coral in far better shape than around Unguja. On a good day in the dry season you see thirty or forty metres.
Almost every dive centre belongs to a lodge, so you book the diving with your room. Swahili Divers at Gecko Nature Lodge and the centres at The Manta Resort and Fundu Lagoon are the ones that run daily. The sites inside the Pemba Channel Conservation Area charge a daily fee on top.
Site Level Depth Misali IslandCoral gardens on the east side, a wall on the west. Where most people start. All levels 5 to 30 m Fundu Gap and Fundu ReefA wall so thick with hard coral that seasoned divers come up talking about it. Intermediate 10 to 35 m Njao GapStrong tidal drift with trevally, barracuda and eagle rays. Not for your first drift. Advanced 15 to 40 m Kigomasha and Manta PointOff the northern tip, nearest the lodges up there. Mantas in some seasons, never promised. Intermediate to advanced 12 to 30 m What level you needAn Open Water card gets you onto Misali and the gentler sites. For the walls and the gaps, an Advanced card and a few drift dives behind you make the difference between enjoying Pemba and being towed round it. Still learning? Do it on Unguja first: our guide to diving in Zanzibar covers where and for how much.2.Snorkel and picnic on Misali Island
From $120 on a tour, lunch included · Most of a day
A forested island ringed by white sand off Chake Chake, protected since the late nineties, with reef you can reach by swimming straight off the beach and short trails through the trees. The name means prayer mat, after a legend about a prophet who stopped here to pray. If you only do one boat trip on Pemba and you do not dive, make it this one.
Misali Island snorkelling with a beach barbecue
The protected island off Chake Chake, reef from the sand, grilled fish for lunch.
7 h· Hotel pickup3.Snorkel off Njau Island
From $135, lunch and drinks included · Most of a day
The quieter alternative to Misali, off the north west coast near the Njao Gap dive sites. Less known, fewer boats, and a better choice if you are staying in the north, since Misali is a long run south from there.
Njau Island snorkelling, lunch and drinks
A quieter islet off the north west coast, near the Njao Gap dive sites.
5,0(1 review)· 7 h· Hotel pickup4.Walk the sandbank at Fundu Lagoon
From $150 · A full day, tide dependent
The south west lagoon reached by boat, a sandbank that appears at low tide, and snorkelling on the reef beside it. The day is built around the tide, so the start time moves: the closest Pemba gets to a Safari Blue, with a fraction of the boats.
Fundu Lagoon sandbank and snorkelling
The south west lagoon by boat, a sandbank at low tide and the reef beside it.
7 hFrom$150per person
Check availability5.Vumawimbi beach and the Ras Kigomasha lighthouse
From $99 with a spice farm, or free from a northern lodge · A full day on a tour
The longest empty beach on the island, kilometres of sand on the Kigomasha peninsula with nobody on it. At the tip stands a British lighthouse from 1900, the Mnarani of the tour listings, which the keeper will usually let you climb. At low tide a sandbank appears off the point. Staying in the north, it is a walk. Staying elsewhere, the tour adds a clove farm on the way.
Spice farm, Vumawimbi beach and the lighthouse
Cloves in the morning, the empty north coast after, Ras Kigomasha to finish.
8 hFrom$99per person
Check availability6.Walk through Ngezi forest
From $119 with lunch and transfers · Two hours on foot, a day with the drive
The last large stand of the island's native forest, in the north west, walked with a park guide. The Pemba scops owl and the Pemba flying fox both live here and nowhere else. Go early in the morning, when the birds are about and the heat has not set in.
Ngezi forest guided walk, lunch and transfers
The island's last native forest, with the park guide and a driver both ways.
7 hFrom$119per person
Check availability7.Watch the flying foxes at Kidike
A small entry fee, paid on site · An hour, late afternoon
A colony of several thousand Pemba flying foxes, a fruit bat with a wingspan of more than a metre and a half, roosting in a stand of trees off the road between Chake Chake and Wete. The village runs it. Come around five, when they start to wake up and take off. Any driver knows the turning, and it combines well with a spice farm.
8.Spend a morning in clove country
From $95 with Chake Chake · Five to seven hours
Pemba grows most of the archipelago's cloves, and in harvest season the roadsides are lined with mats of buds turning from pink to brown. A farm visit here is a working plantation rather than a show garden. The history of the trade is told better on a spice tour on Unguja, but this is where the crop actually comes from. The tour adds Chake Chake, the capital, with its covered market and the fort the Omanis built.
Chake Chake town and a clove farm
The capital's market and fort, then the crop the island lives on.
7 hFrom$95per person
Check availability9.Tumbe fish market and Kojani Island
From $104 · Five hours
Tumbe, on the north east coast, is the biggest fish landing on Pemba, and the morning auction on the beach is the busiest scene on the island. The tour carries on by boat to Kojani, a village island just offshore that hardly any visitor sees. Go early, because the market is over by late morning.
Tumbe fish market and Kojani Island
The biggest fish landing on Pemba, then a boat to a village island.
5 hFrom$104per person
Check availability10.The ruins nobody visits
A boat from Chake Chake, priced on the day · Half a day
Ras Mkumbuu, a mosque and pillar tombs from around the fourteenth century on a headland west of Chake Chake, reached by boat. Pujini, the earthwork remains of a fortified palace from the fifteenth, lies south east of town. Neither has a ticket office or a crowd. Your lodge arranges the boat and a guide who knows the stories.
11.Take a sunset dhow from Wete
From $110, drinks included · Two hours
The west coast faces the sunset, and two hours under sail among the islets off Wete is a good way to end a day. It costs well over double a sunset dhow on Unguja, because there is one boat rather than forty. Most lodges on the west coast run their own version, so ask before booking.
Sunset dhow from Wete, drinks on board
Two hours under sail among the islets off the north west coast.
2 hFrom$110per person
Check availability12.Sleep in the Manta Resort's underwater room
Around $1,500 a night for two · One night
The reason many people have heard of Pemba at all. A floating cabin moored over the reef off the north coast, with a roof deck in the sun and a bedroom four metres down behind glass on all sides. Fish come to the window at night, drawn by the lights. It is one strange night rather than a holiday, it books up months ahead, and most guests pair it with a few nights in an ordinary room.
Prices and durations read from GetYourGuide on 23 September 2026, and indicative. These are partner links: the price is the same for you.
A Pemba day trip from Zanzibar
Possible, and priced at $280 to $380 a person with the flights. You fly out on the morning plane, a driver and guide take you round the island, and you fly back in the evening.
It shows you the green island and the clove country. It leaves no time for Misali or the diving, which are the reasons to go. One night in a guesthouse and a flight each way costs about the same and doubles what you get out of it.
Pemba day trip from Zanzibar, flights included
Out on the morning plane, back in the evening, driver and guide on the island.
From$280per person
Check availability
Pemba culture day from Zanzibar by plane
Flights, villages and a spice farm, landing at the southern end of the island.
From$378per person
Check availabilityIs Pemba worth the trip?
Pemba rewards a particular kind of traveller and wastes the time of everyone else. Pick the line closest to your trip.
Which of these is you?
Go
- Nights on Pemba
- 5 to 7
- Base
- The north coast, or Fundu Lagoon for Misali
This is who the island is for. Walls that drop into the Pemba Channel, visibility that clears thirty metres on a good day, and rarely another boat on the site. Book the dives with the lodge and leave a clear day before the flight back.
How Pemba compares with diving on UngujaPemba vs Zanzibar: how the two islands differ
When people say Zanzibar they mean Unguja, the larger island with Stone Town and the airport. Pemba lies fifty kilometres to the north east across a channel that is hundreds of metres deep, and in most respects it is the opposite island.
| Pemba | Unguja (Zanzibar) | |
|---|---|---|
| Landscape | Hilly and green: clove plantations, mangrove creeks, rice paddies | Flat coral island, coconut palms, wide open lagoons |
| Beaches | Few. The best sand is in the far north and on islets offshore | Dozens, and the north coast swims at any tide |
| Diving | Walls, drift, 20 to 40 m visibility, almost no other boats | Reef diving at Mnemba, 10 to 30 m visibility, busy boats |
| Tours | $95 to $150, small local operators, one boat on the site | $25 to $80, dozens of operators, crowded favourites |
| Where to sleep | A handful of lodges and resorts, plus simple guesthouses in town | Hundreds of hotels at every price |
| Atmosphere | Conservative, rural, very few visitors, alcohol mostly in the lodges | Used to tourism, bars and nightlife on the north coast |
Arab traders called it al Jazeera al Khadra, the green island, and it still is. About half a million people live here, mostly from fishing, rice and cloves, and tourism is a small side business rather than the economy. That is the appeal. It is also why everything costs more.
How to get to Pemba from Zanzibar
Fly, unless you have a reason not to. The ferry saves some money and costs you most of a day.
| Route | Time | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Flight, Zanzibar (ZNZ) to Pemba (PMA)Several a day with Coastal Aviation, Auric Air, ZanAir or As Salaam, in aircraft of twelve seats or so. They fill up in high season. | 25 to 35 min | $70 to $120 |
| Flight, Dar es Salaam to PembaUseful if you land in Dar or arrive from a safari, and often via Zanzibar anyway. | 45 min to 1 h 15 | $120 to $170 |
| Ferry, Stone Town to MkoaniAzam Marine and others, a few days a week, cancelled in rough weather. Mkoani is at the southern end, so the northern lodges are two more hours by road. | 4 to 6 h | $35 to $50 |
The Pemba flights leave from terminal 1, the old domestic building a few hundred metres from the international terminal. Allow ten minutes to walk or get a taxi across, more if you are connecting from a long haul arrival. The full layout is in our guide to Zanzibar airport.
On Pemba there is no taxi rank worth relying on and no car hire desk. Lodges arrange the transfer from the airstrip, or you can book a car for the whole group in advance. For the other ways of moving around the archipelago, see getting around Zanzibar.
Pemba airport transfer to your hotel
Priced per vehicle, which matters here: the northern lodges are 90 minutes away.
From$25per group, up to 4
Check availabilityLuggage on the small planes
Where to stay on Pemba Island
The choice is small and mostly full board, because outside the towns there is nowhere else to eat. Resorts run from about $300 to $600 a person a night, the dive lodges less, and guesthouses in town $30 to $60.
- The north: Kigomasha
- Where most of the lodges are, on the only stretch of Pemba that looks like a postcard, with Vumawimbi beach on the doorstep. The Manta Resort, The Aiyana and Gecko Nature Lodge, which runs Swahili Divers, are all up here. About an hour and a half by road from the airport.
- The south west: Fundu Lagoon
- One resort on a lagoon reached by boat, with its own dive centre and the shortest run to Misali. Barefoot luxury in tents on stilts, and it has been running for over twenty years, which on Pemba is a long time.
- The towns: Chake Chake, Wete, Mkoani
- Simple guesthouses at $30 to $60 a night. The most central base for the tours on this page, since most operators pick up in Chake Chake, but far from any beach worth the name.
Rooms at Pemba Island
Fewer places are listed for the whole of Pemba than for a single beach on Unguja, and some lodges only sell direct. Use the search to compare what is online, then check the lodge's own site for dive and full board packages.
See places to stay at Pemba IslandPartner link. The price is the same for you.
When to go, and how many days
- October to March. The best diving and snorkelling, with calm water and the clearest visibility of the year. February and early March are the high point.
- June to September. Dry, cooler and pleasant ashore, but the kusi wind roughens the channel and some boat days get cut short.
- April and May. The long rains. Several lodges and dive centres close outright, so check before you plan anything.
Three nights is the minimum, because the arrival and departure days are mostly travel. That leaves two full days: Misali and one day on land. Divers should plan five to seven nights, and leave at least eighteen hours between the last dive and the flight back, with travel insurance that covers diving and evacuation from a secondary island.
Before you go
- Bring dollars. The only ATMs are in Chake Chake and Wete and they are not always working. Lodges take cards, often with a surcharge, and the small operators want cash.
- Expect a patchy signal. Coverage drops out in parts of the island, and the north is weaker than the towns. An eSIM on the right network helps, and lodge wifi is slow.
- Take malaria precautions. Pemba has more of it than Unguja. Ask your doctor about prophylaxis, and use the nets.
- Dress for a conservative island. Shoulders and knees covered in the towns and villages, swimwear on the lodge beach and the boat only. During Ramadan, do not eat or drink in the street in daytime.
Not the same PembaPemba is also a port city in northern Mozambique, capital of Cabo Delgado province, about 850 km further south. Different country, different visa and different flights. This page is only about Pemba Island in Tanzania.
Questions people ask about Pemba Island
What is there to do on Pemba Island?
Diving first: the walls of the Pemba Channel are the best diving in Tanzania. After that, snorkelling at Misali or Njau island, the empty beach at Vumawimbi and the lighthouse above it, Ngezi forest, the flying foxes at Kidike, clove farms, the fish market at Tumbe, medieval ruins at Ras Mkumbuu, and a sunset dhow from Wete. Most of it takes a full day and costs $95 to $150 on a tour.
Where is the best snorkelling on Pemba Island?
Misali Island, off Chake Chake, where the reef starts a few metres from the beach and the island is a protected conservation area. Njau island in the north west is quieter and closer if you are staying in the north. Both are full day boat trips with lunch.
Can you do a day trip to Pemba from Zanzibar?
Yes, with flights included, for roughly $280 to $380 a person. You leave on the morning plane and return in the evening, with a driver and guide on the island. It is a long day that shows you the landscape but leaves no time for diving or Misali. One night on Pemba costs about the same and doubles what you see.
Is Pemba Island part of Zanzibar?
Yes. Zanzibar is an archipelago, and Pemba is its second island after Unguja, the one everyone calls Zanzibar. Both belong to Tanzania, so the Tanzanian visa and the compulsory Zanzibar insurance you arrived with cover Pemba too, with nothing extra to apply for.
How do I get from Zanzibar to Pemba?
Fly. Small aircraft run several times a day from terminal 1 at Zanzibar airport to Karume airport near Chake Chake, taking 25 to 35 minutes for $70 to $120 each way. The ferry from Stone Town to Mkoani costs less but takes four to six hours, sails only a few days a week, and is often cancelled when the sea is up.
Is Pemba Island safe?
Yes, and it has less petty crime than the busy parts of Unguja. The practical risks are elsewhere: malaria is present, medical care on the island is basic, and a diving injury means evacuation to Unguja or Dar es Salaam. Dress modestly in the towns and villages, because the island is conservative.
What is Pemba Island famous for?
Cloves and diving. Pemba grows most of Zanzibar's cloves, and in harvest season you drive past mats of them drying beside the road. Underwater, the walls of the Pemba Channel and the reefs around Misali are the best diving in Tanzania. It is also known for the Pemba flying fox, a large fruit bat that lives nowhere else, and for the underwater room at The Manta Resort.
Pemba or Mafia Island?
Pemba for wall diving, visibility and a remote lodge on a beach. Mafia for whale sharks, roughly October to February, and for a marine park that suits snorkellers as well as divers. Mafia is reached from Dar es Salaam rather than from Zanzibar, which also changes how it fits a trip.