EricW
Registered
We have been traveling a lot for diving lately and wanted to share some of our experiences with others in case they are helpful. By way of background, we live in California and dive locally in Monterey, but have been exploring some more locations off the beaten path.
In September 2025, we planned a month diving around eastern African and Maldives.
We started on Mafia Island where we dove for a week. We stayed at Kinasi Lodge in the Marine Park and dove with Blue World Diving (on-site).
Kinasi Lodge was perfectly adequate as a place to stay. It doesn't really have many amenities but it is nicely perched on a hill above the ocean with a small pool. Since we were there off season, the four of us actually had the entire hotel (and diving) to ourselves. We went and looked at the other dive facilities and the accommodations look pretty comparable to Kinase (with the exception of Dive Planet which is not on the shore, but we talked to the owners who were super nice; they only have two rooms as of now).
Kinasi is an all inclusive and - (maybe as we were the only guests) - they really catered to our tastes. They had an "Africa night" where the food was more local and quite tasty.
To the diving - as mentioned we were definitely there in the off season and in this case I think it mattered. It is the southerly monsoon season which brought currents from the southeast which really negatively impacted visibility (and didn't bring larger pelagics). It also makes diving "outside the reef" a bit more challenging - and you definitely want to dive outside the reef. It might have just been the time we were there, but I think that diving in season (December to March) is probably the way to go here. On the plus side, the coral was in relatively decent shape and there was a nice density of reef fish. We had good luck with turtles and blue spotted rays, but not many sharks around.
Note that you really have to dive according to the dives which can limit the number of dives or really move your dive times around (we met one morning at 5am).
One highlight was an excursion to Mange Reef where we had lunch with fresh catch on a sand bar.
Dive well -
In September 2025, we planned a month diving around eastern African and Maldives.
We started on Mafia Island where we dove for a week. We stayed at Kinasi Lodge in the Marine Park and dove with Blue World Diving (on-site).
Kinasi Lodge was perfectly adequate as a place to stay. It doesn't really have many amenities but it is nicely perched on a hill above the ocean with a small pool. Since we were there off season, the four of us actually had the entire hotel (and diving) to ourselves. We went and looked at the other dive facilities and the accommodations look pretty comparable to Kinase (with the exception of Dive Planet which is not on the shore, but we talked to the owners who were super nice; they only have two rooms as of now).
Kinasi is an all inclusive and - (maybe as we were the only guests) - they really catered to our tastes. They had an "Africa night" where the food was more local and quite tasty.
To the diving - as mentioned we were definitely there in the off season and in this case I think it mattered. It is the southerly monsoon season which brought currents from the southeast which really negatively impacted visibility (and didn't bring larger pelagics). It also makes diving "outside the reef" a bit more challenging - and you definitely want to dive outside the reef. It might have just been the time we were there, but I think that diving in season (December to March) is probably the way to go here. On the plus side, the coral was in relatively decent shape and there was a nice density of reef fish. We had good luck with turtles and blue spotted rays, but not many sharks around.
Note that you really have to dive according to the dives which can limit the number of dives or really move your dive times around (we met one morning at 5am).
One highlight was an excursion to Mange Reef where we had lunch with fresh catch on a sand bar.
Dive well -
