The Comores is a county on the African East Coast that a lot of people dont know about. Its neighbors Seychelles, Madagascar and Mauritius receives a lot more tourists every year, but exactly that is the reason why you should chose Comores over these places!
On the flight here I had met Fiona, an Australian traveler who accepted my offer of renting a car and drive around the island together. We got a beat up Renault car for 40 euro, which marched the state of the roads here. Moroni is full of potholes, pedestrians and horribly wrong parked cars, but once we got out of the capital it was no traffic and more comfortable driving around.
We started at 10am and had our first stop at the beach in Misamiouly, which is the prettiest beach I have ever seen in Africa, with not a single person in sight. From there it was just a short drive to the more famous Trou de Prophete, which was a bay where you could relax and do water sports. The water was just as turqouise as the previous beach, but the beach was by far not as pretty and we decided to just keep driving after a one minute photo stop there.
On the Northern tip of the Island there was a volcanic crater called Lac Sale where you could walk around the crater rim to see the water change colors from blue, to green and to a more clear color. A local showed us how the lake was “magical” by throwing rocks at it and watch the wind catch them so that they didnt hit the water.
Le Trou de Prophete Bay in the North
From the North point and on the way back through the East Coast there was not much places of interest to visit. The landscape changed quite a bit though with a hilly South and a more dry landscape which reminded me of the out back in Australia. We passed villages, where some of them were decorated by what looked a bit like Christmas lights, but was in fact plastic bags hanging from thread over the streets.
Back at the capital I had another couple of days to explore and went to the Islands mains sight, the Grand Mosque du Vendredi, to the museum of Comores and tried to hike up Mount Karthala which I soon realized was not possible in this heat.
Four days in the Grand Comore felt a bit much as we already got to see almost everything from the one day with rental car, but if I was not on a tight budget I would have taken the 70 dollar per way ferry to Moheli which is supposed to be an even calmer and cleaner version of Grand Comore.
I was also so lucky to get a free VIP ticket to the game of the National Comotian team, who beat Malawi 2-0. The athmosphere at the game and in the streets afterwards was crazy.
My last sunset from Iconi beach.