MAFIA ARCHIPELAGO YACHT CHARTERS
MAFIA ISLANDS
From our home Operations Base at Nungwi Beach at the northern tip of Zanzibar, Mafia Archipelago can easily be included in charter, and its well worth the effort!
The Mafia Archipelago Marine Park supported by the World Wide Fund for Nature, forms part of the coral reef protecting the coast of Tanzania. It is situated about 130 km south of Dar-es-Salaam and about 25 km from the mainland.
Less than a thousand tourists a year visit Mafia island, off Tanzania, which has ruins dating back to the 11th century!
Comprised of a number of islands and uninhabited coral atolls, Mafia is a spectacularly diverse natural environment. It offers a unique mix of Africa within a tropical setting. Large palm groves, mango & cashew trees dominate the island while impressive baobab trees are dotted amongst typical African savannah grassland. Monkeys, small antelopes, wild pigs, lemurs and dwarf hippos run wild while falcons, fish eagles, Comoro bats 'flying foxes' and giant turtles have also made it their breeding ground.
Mafia is little changed from ancient times. It retains a traditional, unspoilt non-commercialised friendly culture, where local people go about their business as artisans, farmers, fishermen and sailors.
As with all the islands that fringe the East Coast of Africa, Mafia's history is deeply rooted within the empires of the ancient. Creeper-clad ruins inhabit the forest on the tiny offshore island of Chole Mjini, once one of the most important trading towns onAfrica's East Coast. For centuries, silver from the mines of Zimbabwe was the highest quality in the world and from Mafia, huge dhows sailed the monsoon winds across the Indian Ocean delivering this silver for the smelting of the finest swords throughout the Indian and Ottoman empires.
There is no doubt that the Islands along this stretch of the East African coastline will give you a taste of life when the world was still 'flat' and men dreamt of high sea adventure, exploration and discovery.
