The Green Island — the world's best diving, clove harvest, and zero crowds
Pemba Island is Zanzibar's quieter sibling in the Zanzibar Archipelago — a hilly, heavily forested island covered in clove plantations (Pemba produces 75% of the world's cloves) with coral walls that drop 40–60 metres into channels swept by strong Indian Ocean currents, making it consistently rated among the world's top 5 dive destinations. Unlike Zanzibar (busy, touristy), Pemba has almost no mass tourism — a handful of dive resorts, the ruins of Shirazi-era mosques in the jungle, and the distinctive Pemba flying fox (a very large fruit bat) as the island's mascot. The mangrove channels and…
Pemba was settled by Shirazi Persian traders in the 10th–11th centuries CE and became part of the Omani Sultanate of Zanzibar in the 18th century. The island's clove cultivation was introduced by the Omani Sultan Seyyid Said in the 1820s — transforming Pemba and Zanzibar into the world's dominant clove producers within a generation. The British East Africa Company controlled Pemba as part of the Zanzibar Sultanate protectorate from 1890. After the 1964 Zanzibar Revolution (which overthrew the Sultanate), Pemba was incorporated into the Tanzania-Zanzibar union.