How far would you travel in pursuit of space, emptiness, white sandy beaches and the possibility of spending a week doing very little? As I made my way to Pemba, this question assumed increasing significance. I had always wanted to visit this magical, lesser-known island off Zanzibar described by Evelyn Waugh in his book "Remote People" in 1931 as one of the world’s centers for voodoo and witchcraft. Guides to Zanzibar talk about Pemba as fertile, isolated and unravaged by tourism. But there is a reason why it is unravaged, as my journey there revealed.
First I flew to Dar-es-Salaam via Nairobi. Then there was a somewhat fraught changeover to a small (10-seater) chartered aircraft from another part of the airport, a lot of forms to fill in (but you soon learn to chill out about the Tanzanian obsession with useless paperwork), a 45-minute flight over Zanzibar, before we landed at a tiny deserted airport on empty, beautiful green Pemba itself in a sweltering 26 degrees C. We were greeted by a group of schoolgirls in blue shirts who were all lined up by their teacher. For one ghastly moment I thought they were going to break into song, but luckily all they did was wave. Five minutes later, my enthusiasm for paradise waned somewhat when our driver advised us to drink plenty of water as a hot car journey lay ahead.
A bumpy drive down a tarmac road full of potholes took us via Pemba’s main town, Chake Chake, to the port of Mkoani in the south-west corner of the island an hour later. We passed through a series of small thatched settlements, where people were sitting in the shade. Opposite a petrol station, a shop had an impressive display of plastic buckets in many colors. At the port, gates were unlocked and I walked across a jetty where hundreds of tiny fish glittered as they dried in the sun, and porters and fisherman jabbered away in Swahili. Around the harbor a collection of half-finished concrete buildings straggled up the hillside, and dhows and dugout canoes bobbed in the turquoise water. Shattered, we transferred to small speedboats and were whisked across the bay on the final 30-minute leg of the journey to Fundu Lagoon.
The best thing about this luxury resort created by the dress designer Ellis Flyte and her friends is that it is in harmony with the landscape. A long wooden jetty snakes out into the water from a perfect white beach fringed by mangrove trees. The 20 thatched guest-houses sit on stilts in a rank that starts on the beach and is staggered up the hill behind. Every one is designed to feel private and secluded. This definitely seemed a place to get away from it all. Struggling up the jetty steps to a shady club and lounge, I was greeted by a familiar face, my friend Hannes, for years the patient and long-suffering manager of the Groucho Club in Soho, London, now Fundu Lagoon’s on-site boss. He looked 10 years younger — slim, bronzed and fit — a great advert for the healing properties of Pemba.
My room turned out to be a spacious and luxurious tent, with a high ceiling, solar-powered fans and water heating, a large bed with romantic fine cotton mosquito nets and a bathroom full of Fundu Lagoon’s own brands of aromatherapy-based products: shower gels, shampoos and body lotion. After a hot shower using the large bottle marked AM-Uptime, I felt almost normal. Perhaps that also had something to do with the time difference with the UK being only two hours.
My room was funky and cozy, personalized with African rugs, sculptures, lamps and masks picked up by Ellis on her travels. The wardrobe was a basic wooden affair with a piece of unbleached cloth on a twig as a door. The desk seemed cluttered with a large lamp and a tray of water, but I soon ditched all that and set up my mobile office. The beach robe designed by Ellis hanging in the closet seemed more appropriate for Bette Davis than yours truly, with large revers and big patch pockets. I slipped into one of my tried and tested Issey Miyake Pleats Please shifts instead.
Next day it rained all morning and I lay on the sofa in my room reading and watching women walk up the beach collecting shellfish. Breakfast was delicious fresh fruit: pineapple, papaya that melted in your mouth and mango. Later, when the rain stopped (it never pours for long) I set out to explore, walking with one of the resort’s waiters. Pemba is 97 percent Muslim, so my walking costume consisted of trainers, socks, a long black skirt and a white cotton shirt I bought in the hotel shop. Walking on Pemba is a delight as most people shout "hello" (jambo) and children are thrilled to see you. Small babies, of course, scream their heads off in fear at the sight of a 6ft white woman with bright red hair, but they soon get over it. The beach stretched unspoilt as far as I could see in both directions. After a mile I stopped at a makeshift stall under a shady tree and did a bit of shopping, buying some fabric, but reluctantly turning down a great homemade straw hat as I couldn’t imagine getting it home. Another hotel was being built about two miles down the beach, but work had ground to a halt. If you want to travel around Pemba, bear in mind that there are only guest-houses and a few very basic hotels run by the Zanzibar Tourist Corporation. Fundu Lagoon is, at present, the only luxury resort on the island (about 55 miles long and 13 wide). Exploring is best done on foot, or by hiring a car and driver from your hotel, or by bike.
My days gradually fell into a pattern of walking; either along the tracks linking the small villages deep in the jungle, where the crop of cloves was laid out to dry on hessian, or along the beach at low tide, wearing long socks and plenty of repellent to deal with the voracious sandflies. Here footpaths trodden for decades lead from the shore back to settlements totally obscured by jungle. Women weaved across the sand and coral (the tide seemed to go out about half a mile) collecting all kinds of shellfish, from oysters to a kind of clam which they cooked over small fires. Fishermen used long nets strung from two dugout canoes to trawl the waters which were teeming with fish. At low tide I walked to the end of the wooden jetty, climbed down the wooden steps avoiding the small brown crabs which were scurrying about, and swam for hours among the barracudas and shoals of tiny flying fish, some of which would occasionally hit me. It’s not often I get struck in the face by a floppy fish. I can assure you this was far more frightening for them than for me.
Hearty dinners of fish were eaten in the outdoor beach-side restaurant under a large thatched roof, preceded by cocktails at sunset. One evening I watched the sun go down from a dhow, swigging chilled rose. Could anything be more perfect?
Pemba is a great place for divers and some of our group were keen to explore the reef off Masali island nearby. Fundu Lagoon was a fully equipped Padi diver center, but I withstood all efforts to teach me the basics. I enjoyed the boat trip to Masali, once the hangout for ruthless pirate Captain Kidd and now a nature reserve. While the others were getting on their masks and equipment, I perused the information board in the thatched shelter at the end of the beach, before deciding to walk around to the western end of the island on one of the well-marked nature trails. The ranger told me that he spent two weeks on the island at a time, and two weeks off, bringing all his own food and water as Masali is totally arid. Sounded like the job for me.
The only other visitors are fishermen, who had set up camp and were busy cooking on an open fire. My shell-lined path took me through forest to a narrow palm-fringed beach, where a growing number of protected green turtles now lay their eggs at certain times of year. A dhow was anchored a few yards out, about to go out fishing. I swam in perfectly clear water, practicing my floating and emptying my mind. The ride back was bumpy as a wind had sprung up, but who cares?
A barbecue on the beach meant great food but as much flesh covered up as possible to prevent my legs being dinner for the bug life. Some of my friends took a 24-hour trip to Zanzibar to explore historic Stonetown (two hours by boat from Mkoani) but I had become so expert at doing very little that I didn’t bother. My days had become harmonious periods of walking, swimming, reading and looking vacantly at the horizon. (The Independent)