Pemba Island

Pemba is the second island of the Zanzibar archipelago, hillier, greener and far less visited than Unguja (the main Zanzibar island). Its fertile ridges grow most of the archipelago's cloves — historically more than Zanzibar itself — and during the July-to-October harvest the whole island smells of them. Tourism here is low-key and mostly built around diving: the Pemba Channel drops in sheer coral walls into hundreds of metres of blue, with exceptional visibility, gorgonians, reef sharks and pelagics, and the marine reserve around uninhabited Misali Island offers shallow gardens for snorkellers and beginners.

Away from the water, the Ngezi Forest Reserve protects one of the last patches of the indigenous forest that once covered the archipelago, home to the endemic Pemba flying fox. Pemba is more conservative and less set up for casual tourists than Zanzibar — there are only a few small upmarket lodges — which is exactly why divers and travellers wanting the Swahili coast without the crowds come here. It is a 30-minute flight from Zanzibar or Dar es Salaam.