Changuu Island

Changuu lies twenty minutes by boat from Stone Town and is usually called Prison Island, after a prison built on it in the 1890s that was never used as one and served instead as a quarantine station for yellow fever. The tortoises came separately: a gift of four Aldabra giants from the Seychelles in 1919, whose descendants now number well over a hundred, with the oldest animals marked as being past a century. A beach and a short forest trail complete the visit.

History

The island takes its name from a fish common in the surrounding sea, and it was uninhabited until the 1860s. Lloyd Mathews bought it for the Zanzibar government in 1893 to build a prison, but no prisoner was ever held there; it became a quarantine station instead and was renamed Quarantine Island in 1923 (Wikipedia, Changuu).

What's there

• The tortoise colony - Aldabra giants descended from four brought in 1919.
• The quarantine buildings - the never-used prison that later served as a fever station.
• The beach - a small strip of sand with snorkelling off the shore.
• The forest trail - a short walk across the island through coral rag scrub.

When to go

June to October and December to February are the driest. Boats run through the day from the Stone Town waterfront. The long rains from March to May bring rough crossings.

Practical notes

The island is small and the visit is short. The tortoise enclosure is crowded with visitors and feeding them is encouraged, which is not ideal for the animals. Boat prices from the waterfront are negotiated and quoted high.

Nearby

Zanzibar City is across the water, and Chumbe is south.

Key facts