Luxury & Remote Mozambique & Tanzania

Day 1. Depart the UK for Mafia Island via Dar es Salaam.

Day 2. Mafia Island, 5 nights [FB]

Transfer by light aircraft to Chole Bay, and Pole Pole Lodge. Within East Africa's largest protected area, Mafia Island Marine Park, Chole Bay's clear waters offer wonderful snorkelling, sailing and swimming. Outside the bay are some of the richest reefs in the world, with unparalleled variety of hard and soft corals and diverse tropical fish.

With over 400 marine species identified, this is the meeting place for large oceanic fish, as well as those common to coral reefs in the Indian Ocean. Almost all of Mafia's best diving is at less than 30 metres, with an unparalleled variety of hard and soft corals and fabulous shallow reefs, bommies, channels, walls and caves, drift and night dives. Among the grasses of the Majira Channel, you may find the amazing mermaid-like Dugong. Giant Sea Turtles lay eggs on the beaches of small islands to the east of Mafia, while the fascinating giant Madagascan Fruit Bat remains an alluring and unusual visitor's attraction.

Mafia island is a real sleepy backwater and remnant of the old Swahili coast, retaining a traditional, unspoilt friendly culture reminiscent of the Zanzibar of thirty years ago.

Day 7. Mafia Island to Pemba, Mozambique, 1-night [B]

Day 8. Quilalea Island Marine Sanctuary, 7-nights [FB]

Nestling in a forgotten corner of Mozambique's Quirimba Archipelago, the Quilalea Marine Sanctuary is one of the most bio-diverse marine areas in the world. Dugongs graze in sea grass meadows, Fish Eagles perch in tall mangroves, turtles nest on white beaches, and Humpback Whales shelter their young in Quilalea's deep channel. Quilalea offers a full range of diving experiences - with sheltered diving and snorkelling a mere 20 metres offshore and more demanding exploration on the big walls of the Montepuez channel, on the southern edge of the sanctuary. Here caves and currents combine to create an underwater paradise, inhabited by reef and pelagic fish of every size and description. The most adventurous divers will want to head for the Saint Lazarus Bank, recognised as having the best unexplored diving in the world.

Accommodation at Quilalea is a haven of secluded luxury. Guests stay in nine large, 'island villas', each with enormous windows to better appreciate sea views and breezes. Natural rock walls, makuti thatch and colonial ceiling fans keep you cool by day, while a king-size bed draped in a romantic net completes the African/Arabian luxury. At the north end of the island is the restaurant, set on a peninsula and offering fabulous ocean views to both the west and the east. Amongst activities available on Quilalea is to charter the Kiraku, an 11 metre yacht, and to sail around the Quirimbas - either for a few hours, the day or stay for a few nights on a diving package.

Day 15. Depart Quilalea for the UK via Dar es Salaam [B]

Day 16. Arrive home