Prison Island and the sandbank

A short dhow ride to the giant tortoises, some well past a hundred, and a swim off Nakupenda sandbank coming back.

Changuu was bought in the 1860s to hold enslaved people, then built as a quarantine station, and never actually used as a prison. What it has now is a colony of Aldabra giant tortoises, a gift from the Seychelles in 1919, some of them comfortably past a hundred and carrying the year on their shell. The swim off Nakupenda sandbank on the way back is the part people remember.

• Half day
• Zanzibar