The Manta Underwater Room

A floating three-storey cabin moored off the northern coast of Pemba, with a bedroom suite submerged below the waterline. The Manta Resort's Underwater Room is one of the few places on earth where you can sleep with reef fish on every side of your bed. It is expensive (currently around US$1,500 a night) and famous; the experience is genuinely strange and the diving access excellent.

Even non-guests at the resort can sometimes book a single-night stay with advance reservation; it sells out months ahead in high season. Worth knowing about as the most distinctive single accommodation on Pemba even if you don't stay there.

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A story
The room was designed by Swedish architect Mikael Genberg in 2013 as a floating cabin moored 250 metres off the Manta Resort beach. The bedroom sits four metres below the waterline, with floor-to-ceiling windows on every wall — and the resort feeds the surrounding reef in the late afternoon, so guests sleeping in the room are bracketed by clouds of grunts, snappers, and the occasional octopus.