Nicknamed the “The Green Island” as it’s hillier and more fertile than its sister island, Pemba is a 40-minute flight by light aircraft from Dar es Salaam. It’s 48 kilometres north of Zanzibar and smaller in size.

It’s also much quieter, with far fewer tourists and only a handful of hotels.

Manta Resort, based right at the northern most point of the island, boasts a unique underwater room that floats offshore, with its own rooftop deck and lounge at sea level.

25 of Africa’s best beaches, Its showpiece is a glass-walled bedroom submerged four meters beneath the surface of the sea and complimented by the marine protection area the hotel has created around it, and this is part of what makes Pemba a truly tropical paradise — its astonishing underwater seascapes and prolific, brilliantly coloured marine life and as such, it offers some fabulous diving.

Misali, a marine conservation area just eight kilometres off Pemba’s west coast, supplies some of the best diving in East Africa, as well as a turtle nesting sanctuary.

Meanwhile the Kidike Sanctuary houses a spectacular colony that holds some 4,000 of island’s flying foxes, a large bat indigenous to the island.